Lesson Preview
Throughout Manna, you will be invited to take a closer look at your current behaviors and to engage in new strategies to cultivate the ground of your life for sexual integrity. You’ll be challenged to notice some of your patterns, and in turn, to roll up your sleeves, develop strategies, make practical decisions, and try new paths.
In response, you may experience one or both reactions: internal resistance and/or internal activism.
Internal resistance
Internal resistance will urge you to put in minimal or no effort. Internal resistance says, “This is just too hard, so why keep trying?” But change won’t happen without your involvement. God is neither a puppet master nor a tyrant. He won’t force you to give yourself to this process any more than he forced the Israelites to leave Egypt. He made a way and went ahead of them, but they had to leave the familiar land they’d been in and follow him. Your effort is a necessity to your involvement in the Lord’s work within you.
Internal activism
Internal activism will urge you to give every bit of effort you have, convinced that if you just do more and try harder, you can overcome unwanted sexual behaviors with stoic resolve. And when you have a slip or a fall, internal activism will either beat you up for failing or it will push you to redouble your efforts and try even harder than before. But you can’t do this with only the strength of your will. You’ll need God’s grace.