Not getting anywhere?

Does it ever feel like you are making no progress whatsoever in your battle against the flesh?

Are you shocked to find yourself a sinner, still? Even after all you've been through, even after all God has done for you?

Do you learn the same lessons over and over, lessons of your weakness, your inadequacy, your shocking selfishness? And are you always surprised?  

Yes. My answer to all of the above: yes.

Yet, as much as I learn and relearn these hard lessons, I learn and relearn the lessons of grace and the love of God for me in Jesus.  Over and over, my hands are emptied, I am stripped. . . and over and over, I am filled, restored, forgiven, and I am clothed by His righteousness.

His ways are not our ways.

My checklist is not His checklist.

He is the author and perfecter of this faith.  He will finish the work He has begun.

I know this, yet when it's done, I know I'll be surprised. 

His ways are not our ways.

Refresh me, Jesus. 

As we mature in faith, we move away from pride in ourselves and our own achievements to a gradual awareness of our spiritual failure and Christ’s work in us as we entrust ourselves to Him. We move away from the conviction that we are self-sufficient to the repeated experience of spiritual bankruptcy.  We move on from delusions of our spiritual importance to a growing sense of our utter insignificance and the glory of God.  We move on from delight in our own power to the painful recognition of our spiritual weakness.  We are brought from our self-righteousness to the increasing consciousness that we are sinful.  In each of these painful realizations, we recognize the glory of God.  Christ fills our emptiness and justifies us by his grace.  In short, the power of Christ is made perfect in our weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)

(Kleinig, Grace upon Grace, p 33)