welcome to the story.

Thoughts on Romans 7:15-25 Who we are now is shaping who we are becoming. That is to say, what we are doing in the present is determining who we will become in the future. We live in a divided state. On one hand we are who we are now. On the other hand we desire to be something that we are not yet. This represents the values and characteristics that we want to represent in the future. So the tension is to bridge these two divided selfs; who we are now and who we want to be in the future. The problem is that we live in a world that pushes us to become something other than what we desire to be. We live in an accomplishment based world that does not care about the character or values that we all intrisinctly desire. In this world we're constantly dragged towards these achievements. They determine our success. Our bosses care more about our performance than they do our family life. You'll never hear your boss come up to you and say, "You know what, you suck as an employee, but you're a great father and husband." It just doesn't happen that way. Schools care more about our grades than they do our personality. You'll never hear Harvard call someone and say, "You made a 800 on your SAT, but you know what? You have a great personality and your friend said you were loyal and trustworthy." It once again just doesn't happen that way. No one grows up though and says they want to be crappy husband or a poor mother. It just happens. No one grows up and says they want to cheat on their taxes. It just happens. Because the character decisions that we are making now, determing the character that we will have in the future. So there are huge gaps in who we are and what we want to become. The difficulty is finding a way to bridge these two divided selfs. Thats where spiritual formation comes in.