“Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and exiles to abstain from sinful desires that wage war against the soul.” 1 Peter 2:11

Lord God, I so badly want to have a life of peace and calm. I so badly want to just go along and get along because it’s more comfortable. It’s so easy for me to sin and to say, “It’s just the way I am.” It’s so easy for me to sin and say, “I couldn’t help it.” It’s so easy for me to fall into any sort of sin and not realize what’s really happened. But Peter’s telling me! The desires of my sinful nature are warring against my soul. The desires and the sins of my sinful nature are not small things that I can let remain. These things want to kill my faith and my soul. Help me, O God, to fight back. Give me strength and power from your Spirit to fight back against the sin in my nature, to hate it as much as you do. Give me power by my baptism to daily kill my sinful nature in me with all its evil and wicked desires. Help me never sit back and let things go. Make me a warrior to fight against all that is sin in me. Amen.