It takes a long time, but if we stay with that line of questioning long enough, the Spirit will eventually reveal the answer. What God showed me when I asked Him these questions was this: “I never intended for you to serve me. In fact, you can’t serve me. I never intended for you to try in your own effort to make yourself holy. And as long as you keep striving, I let you, until you come to the end of yourself.”

Just about every problem you’ll face in your Christian life is due to not believing right. That’s it. Now, I get it: believing right isn’t always easy. In fact, often it’s downright impossible. Why? Because you cannot even believe right unless the Holy Spirit empowers and enables it. When I think back on my 32 years as a disciple of Christ, the times when I was transformed—where I was truly catapulted into a newer, better way of life—all had one thing in common: They were all times where I uttered, “I was blind, but now I see.”

By the grace of God, there came a point in my Christian life when I realized that I would never escape the Romans 7 trap if I kept believing that I could obey God. But once I saw in the spirit that it is actually Christ in me Who is obeying God, my life started to change. Paradoxically, I began “obeying God on accident.” I realized the truth of Romans 6 — I really did die with Christ.

Listen to Pastor Cliff teach us the blessings, healing, and deliverance that come from true obedience to God.

Jesus once said: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39-40).

This is the danger of not drawing the distinction between the Bible and the Word of God. It makes the Scripture itself to be life. But only Jesus is the life. Listen to brother Brett teach us about knowing God and knowing His word.

We make this Christian life a heavy burden and a suffocating yoke for believers. But it isn’t supposed to be this way. It’s only this way because we haven’t understood Who’s doing the work. What does Philippians 2:13 say? It says it is God who is doing the work, not I. But if I don’t know that, I will continue to try to work to produce righteousness and holiness, which paradoxically makes them “dead works.”