Being a Christian means that you are supposed to live in a way that shows people what Jesus is like. You are to live according to God’s perfect standards. But that’s hard. Living with upright morals, having a good attitude, obeying God immediately without knowing what’s going on, and loving all people all the time is difficult. But that’s the standard.
“But I can’t live that life! It’s too hard! I literally can’t be moral all the time!”
Exactly! You can’t do it. You and I can’t live morally all the time – at least not under our own power.
But God knows that, which is why He made salvation to work the way it does. A key point of being saved is surrendering – letting God take rightful control of – your life, every single piece of it from your spirit and soul, to the thoughts you think, to the actions of your body. You can’t live righteously by yourself, but when you are saved, God’s Holy Spirit comes to live inside you. God Himself lives in you, and can live through you.
Wait… what? God living inside and through me? Yeah, that concept can be weird, sometimes even if you do grasp it. When you get saved, the Holy Spirit of God comes to live inside you permanently, meaning you don’t lose Him and you will not be left or abandoned by Him. Yet God still lets you make your own decisions. So while you actually have the help to live the way you should, you still decide whether or not you live that way. But now that you have let God begin to change you, you won’t feel like doing the things you used to do. If you do something wrong, you’ll know it more than you used to. If you continue doing wrong, you’ll feel miserable until you let God turn you around.
So in conclusion, if you think you can’t live the moral life on your own, you’re right. But you aren’t supposed to do it on your own; God is the only one who can give you the strength to live that life.
For those of us who already have the Holy Spirit within us, are we living the life that God commands us to? Are we actually surrendering full control to God so we can be living that life?