Preach the gospel to yourself

Rom 7.21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Rom 8.1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This is something I need, more than breath in my lungs, I need to realize this personally and intimately. Guilt and condemnation from my past seems to loom over me. I fear God, but not as I ought. I fear him as a judge about to recall all of my sin and sentence me to death. I should fear and revere God as God, for I am but a man. But as a child of God, purchased from hell and death by the precious blood of Gods begotten Son, Jesus Christ, I should be moved as a lover to his beloved. I should bask in grace and bathe in the smile of my Father. When The Apostle says "Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?" I cry out with him. I am a man who is tainted and marred by sin. I breathe sin and it flows through me. For me to say that theres "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus", I know that so well in my mind. But believing that is the key to freedom. Owning that truth is my crucial need at the moment. I need to believe that "the law of the Spirit of life has set (me) free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death", and upon believing this true freedom will be mine. I am pained when I hear people say that theology makes no difference in your life, and all these doctrines are great in theory, but it doesn't effect your life. They say that the point of Christianity is to live a good life. But who is good? What man apart from a forgiven man can do good? Without owning these doctrines, the Christian life is futile. This futility I have tasted, but at a time I have also tasted pure freedom. Satan is a master of bringing up your past. Sin that was crucified to Christ on Calvary, sin that has been washed by blood and removed as far as the east is from the west. This is what our Beloved accomplished for us. Freedom from sin and death. And while I have mental assent to this, my flesh is weak and I have been consumed with my past, and now I need to desperately to believe genuinely in Christ's atoning death and the freedom that flows from that death. Doctrine matters. Faith impacts your life. As I sit here now, I have confessed this need to friends, and my spirit cries out (as the father of the demon possessed boy) "I believe, help my unbelief!" My God has obeyed the law perfectly on my behalf because I could not because He is a righteous God who demands perfect obedience, and because of that I have been adopted as a child of the King! This is my life, this is my value: the blood of Christ. Who will save me from this body of death? Christ has saved me! I believe Father, please help my unbelief. Liberate me from this improper condemnation, for it has no place in my life as you condemned Christ on my behalf! Doctrine matters, and believing certain doctrines is the means of believing in what is true, namely that I am freed from my sin and saved from hell. Cause me to believe.

Ps. 42.5Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.