Wretched Man That I Am

It's back! The PAD challenge. Just when it feels like we're tired of writing with one tire stuck in the mud along comes November and April with poem-a-day prompts

 PAD Challenge day one prompt, write a resistance poem.
 

James 4:5-10

Just because we ignore a fact

Does not mean it doesn’t exist

The inner man under constant attack

By flesh seemingly born resist

The good we know we should do, but oh

The bad we should not, that we do

‘Oh, wretched man that I am’, cried Paul

And often we cry with him too

Because flesh is prone to resist the One

That helps us resist the foe

Yet hope abides through Jesus, God’s Son

It is by His grace we go

© Janet Martin

For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. Gal.5:17

 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7

 Struggling with Sin

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.…

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Rom.7:18-25