We All Need Help, Don’t We?

Sometimes ago while I was in primary school, Local Authority Primary school, Odo Oja, in Ikere Ekiti. There’s a young man Dayo, shorter than me but older and stronger. This short fellow bullies me almost every day. My elder brother Abayomi who is now a Methodist Reverend and his friend Dayo Ogundola always wonder why I let such a small boy beat me. They believe I was just being lazy and encouraged me to challenge him to a fight in the evening after school.

My bully classmate found the invitation quite interesting, it won’t just be an opportunity to beat the living daylight out of me but to also make a public show of my weakness. His victory was imminent and even though I was psyched up by my brother for victory, I was defeated in my heart already. Like a lamb to the slaughter, I was led to the battlefield. The rule of the game was simple-no adult or siblings involvement.

No sooner than we started that I was already on the floor receiving the worst beating of my life, my brother watched for a while but was constrained from helping me-rules are rules. At some point, he couldn’t hold it anymore so he jumped into the fight arena and with one hand,  held this fellow high up and threw him to the ground. For almost 30 minutes he could not stand up. I sat back and watched the victory and my brother’s effortless conquest. In remembering them again today, I imagine that the power of sin and the flesh is not any different.

It is sheer foolishness for any of us to think that by our strength we will one day overcome sin, bury the flesh, and live a transformed life. Just take a look at your life! You’ve set those sinful habits as new year resolution over and over and you’ve failed over and over. Most of the books on ‘changing your habits’ that we have read says if you can stop it for 27 days you can stop it for life but how’s that coming along? Your sinful nature is stronger and smarter than that. It may disguise during the incubation period which you referred to as discipline season but trust me it will resurface again. It will defeat you over and over no matter how much you sweet-talk yourself into fighting it on your own. You need the intervention of an elder brother.

In speaking about this experience, hear what Paul said in Romans 7:21-25 “ It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; 23-25 but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind, I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead, I find myself still enslaved to sin.

So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature?”

Interestingly, having gone through this experience and won, Paul gave us the actual secret to victory in the last verse when he said “Thank God! It has been done[c] by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free.”

Only by the intervention of our elder brother, Jesus Christ can we defeat sin and flesh. So I’m asking you to come and submit to that christ advantage this morning. He will set you free and give you peace.

May God open your eyes to the path of this true victory today in Jesus name.