You are my Hope

This week I have been living two lives.
These two lives are only evident behind closed doors, in the comfort/danger of God's and my own presence and knowledge.
As I write this, I acknowledge the numerous blog posts and diary entries that I've written about the many times of how temptation has had the better of me.
I find myself living a controversial life; like how Bob Marley wrote influential songs about love and peace but yet, is deemed as the symbol of marijuana.
My point is:
The worst struggle is not about being entirely overwhelmed by the Flesh.
To me, the scariest struggle is the one I am having now - serving two masters: God and my own flesh.
Because I am bought into thinking that my spiritual life is just fine when it's not.
It's like having a split personality and the scary part is that the person himself does not realise it but others do, and it's not only him who suffers the consequences, people around him have to too.
It is a very painful condition and it is not any different from mine in terms of how it feels like.
Just that I'm not hurting anyone around me now, only myself, in the dark corners of my very sinful mind.

Burning a bridge is easy.
But what if you have always grown accustomed to walking on that bridge.
So much so that it becomes a part of you?
Like pain relief.
I walk on that bridge when I have pain in my life.

And here come my famous last words!
Then I realise that the last time I had pain, I looked to hurting myself.
Hurting myself does not equal to pain relief - where is the common sense in that!
Pain relief is looking to the Lord.

What took me so long to get that?!?!?!
Then again, God's Word never ceases to reassure and encourage:

"God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." - John 3:17 

"So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members...so then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. THEREFORE, there is now NO CONDEMNATION for those who are in Christ Jesus, because THROUGH CHRIST JESUS the law of the SPIRIT OF LIFE HAS SET ME FREE from the law of sin and death." - Romans 7:21-25 to 8:1-2

This blog entry reminds me that God is bigger than my circumstances; no matter how small or pathetic I deem myself to be: God always sees me as someone who is "more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ".
This blog entry emphasizes on how our weaknesses will never ever hinder the Lord's work through us or His impact on other people through us.
This blog entry is a reminder of how the Lord gives us hope, even in our broken state.

"You are my hope,
hope like no other,
hope like no other,
and it reaches to me."