Author: Leon Harris

There’s a question that comes up more often than I care to admit.

“What does it mean if I keep struggling with the same sin?”

Not just falling into it, but fighting it. Resisting it. Hating it. And still finding myself back there again.

For a long time, that question felt like an accusation.

“If I were really changed, I wouldn’t still be dealing with this.”

But there’s another way to see it, and once you see it, it changes the tone of the whole fight.

The struggle itself matters.

Without the Spirit at work in you, there is no real reason to struggle with sin. Especially the kind no one sees. The kind you could carry quietly, without consequence from anyone around you. There would be no tension. No weight. No internal resistance. You would simply do what you want and move on.

But that’s not what’s happening.

Something in you pushes back. You feel it in that moment before you act, and after. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s heavy, but it’s there.

That tension is not meaningless.

It’s evidence.

Scripture talks about the Spirit convicting us, and that word matters. Conviction is not the same thing as condemnation.

Condemnation says, “This is who you are. Stay here.”
Conviction says, “This doesn’t belong to who you are anymore.”
One traps you. The other calls you forward.

That’s why the struggle feels the way it does. You’re being pulled in two directions at once. One part of you still leans toward what’s familiar. Another part of you is being drawn toward something better.

And that pull is not coming from nowhere.

It’s easy to hear “guilt and shame are gifts” and take that the wrong way, because most of us know what it feels like to be buried under them.

But think of it more like this.

When you touch something hot, pain isn’t there to punish you. It’s there to tell you, “Move your hand.” Without that signal, you wouldn’t just feel better, you’d do real damage and not even realize it.

That discomfort you feel when something’s wrong isn’t meant to crush you. It’s meant to wake you up. Not to keep you staring at the mistake, but to turn you away from it.

Because if you stop at the feeling, you’ll stay stuck in it. If all you do is sit in guilt, replay it, and label yourself by it, nothing changes. You don’t move closer to God. You just become more aware of the distance.

But if you treat that feeling like a signal instead of a sentence, everything shifts.

You start to respond. You pause sooner. You recognize the pattern faster. You choose differently.

And over time, obedience gets stronger. Not in a forced, white-knuckled way, but in a steady, growing way. The same situations don’t hit quite as hard. The same habits lose some of their pull. You still notice the struggle, but it doesn’t control you the same way.

And the weight you used to carry after every failure starts to lessen. Not because sin suddenly doesn’t matter, but because you’re no longer living in it the same way.

You’re responding.
You’re turning.
That’s the part people miss.

The presence of struggle is not proof that nothing is changing.
It may be the clearest sign that something is.

Not that you’ve arrived, but that you’re no longer asleep.

Because a person without that tension can go a long time without ever questioning where they’re headed. But someone who feels that pull, who recognizes it, and begins to respond to it—that’s someone being shaped. Slowly, sometimes painfully, but genuinely.

So if you’re in that place where you’re fighting something you wish wasn’t there, don’t rush to write that off as failure.

Pay attention to it.
Respond to it.
Let it lead you somewhere.

Because the goal isn’t just to feel bad about sin.

The goal is to move away from it.

And if that’s starting to happen, even in small ways, then something in you is very much alive.

God is omnipotent. That simply means God has all power. Nothing is beyond Him. He doesn’t need tools, time, or effort the way we do. Creation itself came into existence because He spoke. Scripture tells us plainly that “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

Because of that truth, a natural question arises. If God can do anything… why doesn’t He? Why doesn’t He simply fix everything? Why doesn’t He come down and play Oprah with the world?

“You get healed. You get a million dollars. You get happiness.”

It sounds almost humorous when we say it that way, but underneath the joke is a very real question. If God is loving and powerful, why isn’t His intervention more obvious? The answer begins with understanding what God actually wants from us.

If God revealed Himself constantly in undeniable, unmistakable ways—if miracles happened every hour and divine voices echoed from the sky—belief would be unavoidable. But unavoidable belief is not faith. Scripture describes it this way:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
(Hebrews 11:1)

Faith involves trust. It involves believing before we see the outcome. Jesus spoke directly about this after His resurrection when Thomas demanded physical proof. After allowing Thomas to touch His wounds, Jesus said: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Faith, in other words, matters deeply to God. Not because God needs validation, but because faith reveals something about the heart.

Christian faith is not merely intellectual agreement with a set of ideas. It’s not just saying, “Yes, God exists.” Biblical faith is relational. When someone places their faith in Christ, they’re trusting Him with their life, their forgiveness, their identity, and their future. And that kind of trust doesn’t grow in a vacuum—it grows from love.

Think about it in human terms. The people we trust most deeply are the ones we love most deeply. Trust and love reinforce one another. In that sense, faith becomes a reflection of love. When we believe in God—when we choose to trust Him even when life is confusing, painful, or uncertain—we’re expressing love toward Him. The depth of our faith reveals the depth of our love.

So does that mean God simply sits back and watches the world unfold? Not at all. Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). God is not absent. He hasn’t abandoned the world. But much of His work now happens in a way that many people overlook—He works through His people.

Throughout Scripture, God repeatedly accomplishes His work through ordinary people who are willing to trust Him. He worked through Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt. He worked through Esther to save her people. He worked through the apostles to spread the gospel across the world. That pattern has never really changed. When someone feeds the hungry, comforts the grieving, speaks truth in love, forgives someone who wronged them—that is God working through the faithful.

Paul described believers this way:

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
(Ephesians 2:10)

Notice the order. God prepares the work. We walk in it. The power belongs to God. The obedience belongs to us.

Here’s something many believers eventually discover—living by faith often leads us into situations we would never choose on our own. Left entirely to ourselves, most of us prefer comfort. We prefer safety. We prefer quiet lives where we don’t draw attention to ourselves. Yet faith has a way of pushing us past those boundaries. Someone might feel called to encourage a stranger who is struggling. Someone might speak openly about their faith even though it makes them nervous. Someone might step forward to serve or lead in ways that stretch them far beyond their comfort zone.

From the outside it may look like courage. From the inside it often feels like obedience mixed with trembling. And that trembling obedience is exactly where God often works most clearly. Paul described it this way:

“We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us”
(2 Corinthians 4:7)

We are the jars of clay—ordinary, fragile, imperfect. The treasure is the work of God happening through us.

I know that from the inside. I’m a writer now—you’re reading the proof of that—but there was a long stretch of time when I had no interest in writing about faith at all. I wasn’t running from God exactly, but I wasn’t moving toward anything either. God had to work around a fair amount of my own resistance to get me here. The path wasn’t straight and it wasn’t comfortable, and I wouldn’t have chosen most of it. But looking back, I can see it clearly: He was preparing the work long before I was willing to walk in it.

That’s how it tends to go. When a person truly understands God’s love—not as a concept but as something they’ve actually received—something shifts. The cross is the clearest demonstration of that love:

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”
(Romans 5:8)

God didn’t wait for humanity to deserve His grace. He offered it first. When a person receives that love and responds with love of their own, faith begins to grow. Obedience becomes less about obligation and more about relationship.

Living that way changes how a person approaches everything. Acts of kindness become expressions of obedience. Forgiveness becomes an act of trust. Serving others becomes a way of reflecting Christ. Jesus put it simply:

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16)

The goal isn’t to impress people. The goal is to point people toward God. And often the most powerful witness isn’t a sermon or a debate. It’s a life that quietly reflects the character of Christ.

God doesn’t need human help to accomplish His purposes. But He chooses to involve us anyway. When believers step forward in faith, even trembling faith, they become part of something far larger than themselves. A kind word at the right moment. An act of mercy shown to someone who expected none. These things may seem small. But they travel.

I stood in front of a room full of college students not long ago and talked about all of this. I was terrified. I didn’t want to be there. But I was there, because I had faith. Somewhere along the way, God had been working on me long enough that I finally stopped arguing with it.

Faith may begin as belief without seeing. But over time, you start to see it everywhere. God has been working all along. And often, He works through the hearts of those willing to trust Him, even when their hands are shaking.