15 Bible Verses about Striving With God
Most Relevant Verses
We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice say to me in Hebrew, 'Saul! Saul! Why do you continue to persecute me? It is hurting you to keep on kicking against the goad.'
So if God had given them the same gift that He gave us when we believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to try -- and how could I if I tried -- to thwart God?"
"You people, stubborn in will, heathenish in hearts and ears, you are always resisting the Holy Spirit, as your forefathers did, too.
On the contrary, friend, who are you anyway that you would answer back to God? Can the clay that is molded ask the man who molds it, "Why did you make me like this?"
but if it has its origin in God, you can never stop it. It is to be feared that you may find yourselves fighting God."
He dropped to the ground; then he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" He asked, "Who are you, sir?" And He said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.
"You must struggle on to get in through the narrow door, for I tell you, many will try to get in, but will not succeed,
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am made of flesh that is frail, sold into slavery to sin. Indeed, I do not understand what I do, for I do not practice what I want to do, but I am always doing what I hate. But if I am always doing what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is right.read more.
Now really it is not I that am doing these things, but it is sin which has its home within me. For I know that nothing good has its home in me; that is, in my lower self; I have the will but not the power to do what is right. Indeed, I do not do the good things that I want to do, but I do practice the evil things that I do not want to do. But if I do the things that I do not want to do, it is really not I that am doing these things, but it is sin which has its home within me. So I find this law: When I want to do right, the wrong is always in my way. For in accordance with my better inner nature I approve God's law, but I see another power operating in my lower nature in conflict with the power operated by my reason, which makes me a prisoner to the power of sin which is operating in my lower nature. Wretched man that I am! Who can save me from this deadly lower nature? Thank God! It has been done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So in my higher nature I am a slave to the law of God, but in my lower nature, to the law of sin.
Any man who enters an athletic contest practices rigid self-control in training, only to win a wreath that withers, but we are in to win a wreath that never withers. So that is the way I run, with no uncertainty as to winning. That is the way I box, not like one that punches the air. But I keep on beating and bruising my body and making it my slave, so that I, after I have summoned others to the race, may not myself become unfit to run.
Yes, I long to come to know Him; that is, the power of His resurrection and so to share with Him his sufferings as to be continuously transformed by His death, in the hope of attaining, in some measure, the resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead. It is not a fact that I have already secured it or already reached perfection, but I am pressing on to see if I can capture it, the ideal for which I was captured by Christ Jesus.read more.
Brothers, I do not think that I have captured it yet, but here is my one aspiration, so forgetting what is behind me and reaching out for what is ahead of me, I am pressing onward toward the goal, to win the prize to which God through Jesus Christ is calling us upward.
To this end we are toiling and struggling, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Saviour of all mankind, especially of believers.
You have not yet, as you have struggled on against sin, resisted to the point of pouring out your blood,
Epaphras, one of your own number, a slave of Christ Jesus, wishes to be remembered to you. He is always earnestly pleading for you in his prayers that you may stand fast as men mature and of firm convictions in everything required by the will of God.
