New Morning Mercies for Teens: A 10-Day Gospel DevotionalSample

Every day you need it. You and I simply can’t live without it. What is it? The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

For years, I had a terrible gap in my understanding of the gospel. I can’t tell you why it was missing, but it made my Christian life pretty miserable. I knew that by grace I had been granted God’s forgiveness. I knew that I had been graced with an all-inclusive pass into eternity. In the meantime, I thought it was my job to just gut it out. It was my responsibility to identify sin, to cut it out of my life, and to give myself to living in better, more biblical ways.”

I tried this, trust me. I tried it and found it didn’t work. It seemed that I failed more times than I succeeded. I became more and more frustrated and discouraged. I can remember the moment in college when it all came to a head. It was six o’clock in the morning. I was having the devotions that I really didn’t want to have, when I finally put my head down on my desk and cried, “I can’t do what you’re asking me to do!” Then I read the next chapter in my daily Bible reading, and by God’s grace, it was Romans 8.

I read that chapter over and over, including these words: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (8:13). They were like fireworks going off in my head. God knew my need as a sinner was so great that he had to come and live inside me. If he didn’t, I would not be or do what I had been re-created to be or do.

I need the presence and power of the Holy Spirit living inside me because sin kidnaps the desires of my heart, blinds my eyes, and weakens my knees. My problem is not just the guilt of sin; it’s the inability of sin as well. So God graces his children with the convicting, sight-giving, desire-producing, and strength-affording presence of the Spirit. It can’t be said any better than Paul says it at the end of his discussion of the gift of the Spirit:

[He gives] life to your mortal bodies. (Rom. 8:11)

Reflect: What temptations trip you up most often? How is putting “to death the deeds of the body” different than doing the same thing “by the Spirit” (cf. Rom. 8:13)?