meditations for an everyday relationship with Jesus Wars within

James 4:1-4 What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don't they come from the cravings that are at war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your desires for pleasure.

If we are honest – and really there is no other choice if we want to quit being a slave to our sin – then we will have to look into the wars and fights among us and within us. We must look into the areas of darkness and conflict within our own bodies and souls.

No matter what reason you have arrived at this point in your life you already know that the battle you have been unable to win is the one within your own soul. The reason you have not been successful is because you have not been honest about the inventory of darkness within you and the deficit of Light. The only real Light bearer is Jesus Christ; He is all love and all Light. Get honest for a change. Confess.

Confess and make amends

Numbers 5:7 The person is to confess the sin he has committed. He is to pay full compensation, add a fifth of its value to it, and give [it] to the individual he has wronged.

Yes, confession is good for the soul in the same way forgiveness is. It liberates us. God knows our hearts, but we take responsibility for our sin and make the choice to unload it. The trick is not to pick it all back up when we are on our “way out” of the confessional.

The passage from Numbers is a really interesting combination of confessing and making amends. Nothing we do stands alone in its impact; nothing we do is accomplished in a vacuum. There is always a cause and an effect. Sin is at the root, though in the end it is our own decision-making that has caused the pain

We are confessing because we have done something to dishonor God, but most likely we have also dishonored another person and probably hurt them, along the way. Just because we have not had the law called, or an individual is not bleeding out in front of us, does not mean that what we have done is harmless.

There is no such thing as a victimless crime!