paul. .

last week at group i felt the angst of one of the people that attend. he is ate up with guilt. i pray for him more than i pray for myself. because i don't think he knows the power of prayer. last week he said how can i keep praying over and over again for help from god everytime i feel like using? when it was my turn to speak it was soo hard not to point to him and say i prayed everytime i felt like using . . lord i feel weak. lord i need you. i can't do this alone. etc. just one sentence prayers sometimes 15 times an hour. i am not ashamed of it. i didn't keep count. i don't understand how he can actually think that our father would not want to hear us cry out to him? i am going to read the armor of god esphesians 6:10-18. i have to. today while mom was in the post office i was flipping thru the jerusalem bible and i came to romans 7:15-25 both are paul speaking. paul who use to persecute and hunt down those who followed christ. paul who had a vision on the road to damascus. paul who wrote over 10 chapters of the bible wrote these words. .

 i cannot understand my own behaviour. i fail to carry out the things i want to do, and i find myself doing the very things i hate. when i act against my own will, that means i have a self that acknowledges that the law is good, and so the thing behaving in that way is not my self but sin living in me. the fact is, i know of nothing good living in me-living, that is, in my unspiritual self-for though the will to do what is good is in me, the performance is not, with the result that instead of doing the good things i want to do, i carry out the sinful things i do not want. when i act against my will, then, it is not my true self doing it, but sin lives in me. in fact, this seems to be the rule that every single time i want to do good it is something evil that comes to hand. in my inmost self i dearly love god's law but i can see that my body follows a different law that battles against the law which my reason dictates. this is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body. what a wretched man i am ! who will rescue me from this body doomed to death ? thanks be to god through jesus christ our lord ! in short, it is i who with my reason serve the law of god and no less i who serve in my unspiritual self the law of sin.