"I Can't Stop!"

When Micah was around 4 years old, Micheal heard this frantic statement yelled from the living room where the last TV program had ended and a 'forbidden' program was starting:

You need to turn this off! I'm not supposed to watch this and I can't stop watching!

I can easily imagine that if the Apostle Paul had been a child in the 20th century, we might possibly have heard a statement like that. As it is he cried out with these words:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7:14-25

A child calling out to his Papa, "I don't want to do this and I can't stop! Who can help me but You?"

Micah is struggling with some stuff that seems like this, doesn't know why he's doing it, and at 14 we are not the ones in his life to come 'turn it off' for him. Yes, we can and are doing the tough love stuff and removing privileges and grounding and talking and praying and modeling and everything we can think to do, but this stuff really comes down to some internal decisions Micah needs to make, some places and things he is going to for 'medication' that need changing, and the desire to do what God wants him to do. If we could do that for him we would, but it is not ours to do .

This is hard stuff. These are life changing decisions, life-giving decisions. This is where he is becoming a man, hopefully an obedient man of God. I want, we want, so much for him, we see so much potential, so many possibilities. I have to believe, I do believe that God will not fail, I am expecting a miracle in the life of our son.