I hope you have enjoyed the Upward series so far! Pastor Josh and Pastor Marcus have both shared excellent messages on revelation in action and eyes on the promise! This morning, I want to share with you about the civil war inside. For a moment, I want you to think about your journey in Christ.

Have you ever had times of frustration where you feel like you’re struggling in what seems like the basics, reading the word and studying? Or wrestled with how to take what you have learned and move it from your heard to your heart?

The endless thoughts on how to keep moving forward in my walk when it seems like life is filled with persistent craziness? Where it feels like every time you aim for intimacy with God the noise in your mind wont cease?

The frustration of these experiences make it feel as if there is internal civil war on the inside. What I want you to know today is that there is. That conflict you feel is the tug between the spirit that is willing and the flesh that is distracted and resistant to change.

This wrestling of our soul is common to all who seek an authentic relationship with Christ. If you are feeling that friction, it is because you are in process. Don’t give up and don’t quit! That friction felt through internal conflict is the surest sign that you are in the process of growth.

In these moments, don’t look for a way out of the tension, look for a way through. There is no spiritual maturity without tension and internal friction.

In this passage, Paul speaks to the war inside. On the one hand He is a slave to God, and simultaneously a slave to sin. His will (heart) intends to follow God’s law completely, but when he takes inventory of His actual behavior, he says his performance falls short of his intention.

What I want you to catch is the basic power struggle between your renewed desires to serve God and your remaining sinful nature. These two war within you, in the mind. The key to victory is not to fight harder in your strength, it is to surrender to God’s.

It is through Christ’s atoning death and resurrection that God provides the power to overcome sin and to mature in our relationship with Him. We must learn in the conflict to fight from victory, not for victory. If the battle has already been won for us, we must stop expecting perfection from ourselves and start relying on Christ’s power to change.

So how do we make the shift?

Let’s look at a few practical solutions.

If you struggle to study the word of God. The first thing I would do is evaluate why I feel like I am struggling. Not all struggles are the same. Pinpointing yours helps determine the solution:

• The Routine Struggle: You feel bored or mechanical. (Solution: Change your methods.)

• The Moral Struggle: You’re stuck in a cycle of a specific sin. (Solution: Focus on "putting on" grace rather than just "stopping" the behavior.)

• The Intellectual Struggle: You have big questions or doubts. (Solution: Lean into study and honest conversation rather than suppressing them.)

• The Checklist Struggle: You approach the Bible like a textbook that needs to be mastered or a checklist to satisfy God. (Solution: Relationship over Information: Think of it as a conversation with a person, not an encyclopedia entry. You are not studying for a test, but to get to know a person.)

• The Context Struggle: When you read and simply don’t understand what is being said. (Solution: get a study bible, snag a translation that simplifies, or grab a devotional that helps to guide you through the bible. Learn to utilize commentaries that give understanding to what you are reading and the overall context of the passage or book of the bible. Use a "Map" (Don’t Just Wing It). If you’re opening the Bible to a random page to read each time that is a recipe for confusion.)

Shift Your Mindset
• Quality over Quantity: Reading one verse and thinking about it all day is far more transformative than racing through four chapters just to check a box.
• Use available tools: The Bible Project has multiple videos that provide context that makes the text come alive. Join a bible study group.
• The SOAP Method: This is a simple way to engage:
• Scripture: Write down one verse that stood out.
• Observation: What is happening in this verse?
• Application: How does this change my day?
• Prayer: Ask God for help living it out.

Once we find the right rhythm in study, we then take the next step of learning to put into practice what we have read. This is how we move from head knowledge to heart application.

In anything we do in life, application and understanding come from repetition and practice. When we discover spiritual truth through our time in the word. We must make it a normal practice to do what we have read.

For example: If the word talks about unforgiveness. Then we should examine our lives and look for areas that we need to forgive and do it. If we are reading and find the instruction to have be thankful. We then look to examine areas where we are ungrateful or complaining, and we ask the Lord to help us see and speak the good. If it is to pray. Then we learn to spend time in prayer.

The action of doing activates and grows the spiritual muscles creating and forming spiritual habits in our lives.

A fun brain fact:
Synapse: The connections between neurons in your brain.
They grow stronger every time you repeat something. The first time you try something they are weak and flickering, but repeat it and they thicken, practice again and they will fire faster. Good habits or bad habits they simply build what you repeat. Key fact: Choose carefully what you practice daily because your synapse turns it into automatic.

Something I have noticed about the modern church in America. Many are trying to grow in isolation.

Growth rarely happens in isolation. The New Testament is full of "one another" commands. We are to encourage one another 1 Thess. 4:18. Build up one another Rom. 14:19. Love one another John. 13:34. Serve one another in love Gal. 5:13. Pray for one another James 5:9.

• The Mentor (Paul): Find someone who is five years further down the road. Their perspective can normalize your struggles and show you they are temporary.
• The Peer (Timothy): Having someone to be honest with—someone who knows your specific battles—removes the power of shame.
• Then as you mature, you need to begin mentoring someone else. This is the definition of discipleship. A cool byproduct of investing in someone else’s life is that you grow exponentially. Your study time to invest in someone else, mixed with mentorship and application you are already receiving become a powerhouse for experience and growth.

A final few thoughts:
How do we silence the noise when the craziness of life overflows into our time of intimacy with God? The first thing we do is fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith Hebrews 12:2.

The goal of the enemy is to rob us of intimacy with Christ. Mark 4:19 “and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.”

Not all thoughts are the same, and not all thoughts are sin. Something to understand about your natural biology is this: When you finally slow down and sit in silence, your mind is no longer distracted by the tasks of the day. As a result, all the unprocessed thoughts, worries, and to-do lists rise to the surface.

A few simple tools:
• If things you need to do constantly come to mind and you don’t want to forget about it. Make it a point to have a way to write down the thought so you won’t forget and then leave it.
• Worries need to be surrendered to God by faith. Instead of being fearful of the outcomes, they provide an opportunity to speak God’s word over the outcome through prayer and the releasing of faith.
• Unprocessed thoughts may need to be sifted through.
The key is understanding that you can get to a place of rhythm where your soul is quiet. It simply takes time to rewire our brains away from the need of constant stimulation. When your mind wanders, turn your thoughts into prayers. If you suddenly think of worry, a person, a situation, a to-do, offer them to God in that moment.

You can also use scripture as an anchor for prayer. I often pray through the psalms or other passages of scripture. They help me to stay on track. If you drift, don’t get angry or upset. Simply realign and return your focus to God.

The last practical I have for you today is to learn to stack your habits.
Discipline precedes desire. There will be days you don't "feel" like it, just like there are days you don't "feel" like working out or eating healthy. You do it because it’s good for you, and usually, the appetite grows as you eat.
Growth often stalls because we try to add too many heavy disciplines at once.

Instead, "stack" a spiritual habit onto something you already do:
• Commute + Prayer + Podcast: Use your drive time for honest, unscripted talking to God.
• Coffee + One Verse: Read just one verse while the coffee brews and let it rattle around in your brain all morning.
• Bedtime + Gratitude: Name three things you’re thankful for before hitting the pillow.

The goal to winning the civil war inside is Persistence and consistency over time and submission to Christ.