and despondent, miserable from another failure, but totally
energized instead. In Jesus.
This doesn’t mean you’ll never do anything wrong again.
We’re not built for that. Not yet anyway. Vestiges of sin still
hide in the nooks and crannies of our flesh, and they’re
magnetically drawn toward the allure of temptation. Even the
apostle Paul admitted to the struggle. “I do not understand,”
he said. “I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). “I have
the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out”
(v. 18 ESV). Boy, do I hear you.
But a prayer strategy can even help you here too...
because the only thing worse than not prevailing in purity at
any given moment is failing to respond humbly to God’s
discipline after a setback. His conviction is never meant to
berate you but simply to correct you and bring you back to
Himself. No divide. No separation. Pure.
Purity leads us to fervent prayer, and fervent prayer leads
us to purity. And when we start putting this cycle to work,
building momentum like a spiritual turbine, surrounding our
hearts with the nearness of God’s protection, we strip Satan of