Daredevil

I just found this saved from October 16, 2006, a little over 4 years ago.....I'm so glad I wrote it down then because I have forgotten this story, and it's a great one. 

Carly illustrated so well to us yesterday the battle we face between our flesh and the Spirit.  As we drove together to evening church, she began talking about how she feels like there is something inside her that makes her want to be mean and do wrong.  She then quickly assured us that she doesn’t, of course.  But it keeps pushing and pushing her!  As a mother, my first question was, “what did you do?”  But thankfully, God shut my mouth.  Actually, I had a cold and had lost my voice.  Either way, I had no choice but to just listen to her theological discourse.  She began to talk about a movie we love called The Emperor’s New Groove.  There is a sweet natured character named Kronk in this movie.  Unfortunately for him, he is the sidekick to the villain.  He often has to make decisions about whether to do right or obey his evil boss.  Carly used him to illustrate how she feels.  “It’s like Kronk when he has a daredevil on one shoulder and an angel on the other shoulder.  He doesn’t know which one to listen to!”  She went on to describe that she feels like that too, and do we know what she means? 

Oh do we!  My husband and I snickered about her use of the word Daredevil.  I don’t think she understands really that the voice of the “daredevil” she hears and the voice of Satan are the same because she has very strong feelings of dislike for Satan.  Her conversations about him are filled with resentment and indignance.  She knows he is very evil!  But her little daredevil is not so scary to her.  She feels a need to listen to him.  Why?  Because daredevil is a part of her.  It’s hard to believe it when I look at her angelic strawberry blonde curls as they fan across her pillow and she makes those cute little sucking sounds as if her thumb were still in her mouth as she sleeps.  It’s not so hard to believe the next morning when she pushes her brother into an argument and then blames him for being so mean.  Our morning is shot before 7:30. 

That day in the car, her daddy explained to her that the daredevil is her sin nature.  He told her that it’s easy to do things that God doesn’t like, it just comes naturally to us.  It’s hard to do the things that make Him happy and proud.  She nodded and kind of frowned because she doesn’t like to make God unhappy....it’s just that the daredevil pushes so hard!  Through my laryngitis, I pushed out one phrase as much for myself as for her.  “It’s hard, but God helps us!”  She smiled because she believes it, and knowing that God helps us somehow gives us strength to push back!

Romans 7:15-25

“15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For 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. 21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but 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. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”