The Fraud

“So I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me. I gladly agree with the Law on the inside, but I see a different law at work in my body. It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body. I’m a miserable human being.”

Saturday morning was great. I woke up at 5:30 am, put on my coffee, and fired up the Pit Boss. It was going to be an epic day of beer, football, and food…and it was! I saw some teams lose and my favorite team win. It should have been almost a perfect set up, but yet I was not happy with myself by the end of the night. 

Why, you may ask? Football makes me irrational. No, I mean stupidly irrational. That part of me that knows this is only a game and tomorrow the world will still be here if we lose, just vanishes into thin air. I lose all sense of self and place. Awareness of surroundings becomes meaningless as I may chunk a cup or flip over a table in a New York minute. Let one thing go wrong and bam! It’s over.

You lose yourself and you feel like a fraud. Not everyone has that sense, but most do. Our “feeling” like a fraud probably has to do with how we see ourselves. We may “think” this is how we are supposed to be, act, or do and when actions our do not reflect it…that fraud feeling comes over us again.

Sometimes it is a war within ourselves that we just cannot seem to end. The quote above is from Paul in Romans 7:21-23. This is the famous, “I do not do what I want to do, because I do the thing I hate.”

Obviously, Paul is not quoting this as a constant reminder to never end your guilt trip or shame fest. No, it reminds us that we all may see ourselves this way and that is okay. The point is you are not alone in this. Even Paul’s next few sentences remind us that there is grace available for all. No exceptions!!!

Give yourself grace, my friend, and you may see the only fraud was the thought.

Zac