I am not very good at blogging. I’ve written about that before, and probably hundreds of other bloggers do the same. But I realized something today – this is an ongoing problem that filters through most of my life. I tend to do things when I feel like doing them, rather than scheduling time for it. And because I don’t have a working schedule, I end up letting time slip through my fingers. I spend hours playing games on my phone and watching Doctor Who. And I wonder why I didn’t get the laundry done or a blog post written or a book read or dinner made or even groceries purchased.

As we leave for a conference today, I hope that the learning over the next week will be beneficial to me in introducing personal disciplines into my life. I have so many things I want to do, but I do other things. I can identify with Paul in Romans 7:15-25:

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 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. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Verse 25 is key: Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen to that. I need to rely on Christ, not my own power. I can’t do it alone. And I am thankful that I don’t have to.