Do you ever find that you are fighting against yourself the same battles over and over and over again?

Possibly you feel like you can't stop that destructive habit.

Or maybe you just feel like you are driven by selfish desires, knowing that

you're hurting others, but sometimes you feel powerless to stop it. And deep down inside,

we all know that our willpower is not enough to fight this fight. So what do we do? Where do we go from here? In Romans chapter 6,

verses 6 and 8, we read a fascinating scripture. It tells us that when we joined our lives to Jesus,

our sinful, selfish nature was co-crucified along with Jesus,

and we no longer live under the power of sin.

The scripture and the Passion translation literally says it this way.

It says, obviously, a dead person is incapable

of sinning. Obviously, a dead person is incapable of sinning. Close your eyes and picture Jesus.

As he was on the cross, and as he took that last breath, he was really dead.

The blood stopped flowing from his heart through his veins and to his limbs. His brain stopped functioning.

There was no pulse. There was no pain. There was no nervous system. Jesus was truly dead.

Now according to our scripture,

this is a supernatural, miraculous thing that happened.

But when we identify with Jesus,

our sinful, selfish nature dies.

And it is just as dead as the body of Jesus was on the cross. It has no heartbeat,

it has no brain function, it has no pulse, it has no power. Repeat this after me, say, my sinful, selfish nature is dead.

We're going to say it three times, my sinful, selfish nature is dead.

My sinful, selfish nature is dead.

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