Competitive Confidence

As an intensely competitive individual, it is a difficult admission to assert my own helplessness before the Lord.  However, this is precisely how I have felt lately: helpless.  Throughout my life I desire to make God supreme and to commit myself wholeheartedly to the commandments of the Lord.  But I confess that my method for being a committed follower of Christ is based on my own power and exertion of self will.  It is thus with great, although predictable regret that I am forced to admit repeated failures of behavior and sin.

My issue is not, as it were, my intention to live a life of obedience; it is the fact that I attempt to do it in my own strength.  God doesn't want me to try harder.  He isn't interested in my effort.  He is most interested in my faith.

But how does this faith translate to obedience?  Focus.

I have found that if I remain focused on Christ in faith–what He has done and the grace He showed at the cross–sin and self are not even in view.  It is when I am concerned with myself that sins and behaviors present themselves.

In the end, then, the matter at hand is one of focus: focus on God or on myself.  There is only one good answer here...