Romans 7:21-23

For a long time I never really stopped to look at myself clearly. My days run together, one thing chasing the next, and I never really took stock of my actions, my thoughts, or my motives.

Paul makes a good observation here of himself, recognizing that alongside his goodness, is evil. I do have small victories, victories that pertain to my faith, wins that I have over my more wrongful desires. But, these victories during my day are always swallowed back up into this sea of temptation, and this temptation that could eventually lead to sin. James puts language to what that pull feels like:

"but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." - James 1:14-15 (NIV)

Those small wins never registered. I never really acknowledged that they went away either, it was more of a blip, almost an anomaly in my character. "I actually did something in accordance to Christ? Huh, oh well.." then back to it.

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that I'm too "busy" to take that step back and look at all of this, as I am now. Thankfully, the Spirit resides within me, and I do feel conviction. It gets a lot stronger when my day winds down. Lately, it's been getting stronger through the day too. My issue was that I was numb to my reality. Completely immersed in this physical world, when I forget there's a spiritual one as well. The one that matters most.

Maybe that's the whole point of this: learning to step back not just once in a while, but as a daily practice. To let conviction do what it's trying to do instead of running past it. I'm praying God builds that into me, because I clearly haven't been able to build it into myself