3 Day Bible Reading Plan - “The Struggle”

The Enemy is inside, and the Hero is outside.

Day 1

• Featured Verse: Romans 7:13–14

  • How has God’s good commandment exposed something in you that you previously did not recognize as truly sinful?

  • In what ways do you still treat the law as if it were the problem, rather than seeing how sin twists even holy things?

  • When you feel the weight of being “sold as a slave to sin,” what does that reveal about your need for a power greater than the commandment itself?

“Compared with the holy rule of conduct in the law of God, the apostle found himself so very far short of perfection, that he seemed to be carnal; like a man who is sold against his will to a hated master, from whom he cannot set himself at liberty. A real Christian unwillingly serves this hated master, yet cannot shake off the galling chain, till his powerful and gracious Friend above, rescues him.” - Matthew Henry

Day 2

• Featured Verse: Romans 7:15–20

  • What does it mean to say that “it is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me,” and where do you draw the line between honest confession and avoiding responsibility?

  • How has repeated failure to do the good you want exposed the difference between your renewed will and the flesh that still remains?

  • When you keep doing the evil you hate, what does that teach you about your need for a deliverer beyond self-effort and good intentions?

“This is a strange contradiction,—a man who has grace enough to will to do good, and yet does it not. There are two men in the one man,—the new nature struggling against the old nature. This must be a renewed man who talks in this fashion, or else he could not say that he hated sin; yet there must be a part of him still imperfect, or else he would not do that which he hates.” - Charles Spurgeon

Day 3

• Featured Verse: Romans 7:21–25

  • What does it mean that you can delight in God’s law in your inner being and still feel another law waging war in your members?

  • How has the experience of being made a prisoner to the law of sin humbled your confidence in your own spiritual strength?

  • When have you found yourself crying, even silently, “What a wretched man I am!”, and what did that cry reveal about your true condition before God?

“Burdened with the mass of a rebellious nature, the apostle exclaims, ‘O wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ Even grace, it would appear, does not deliver from the residence of sin. … But grace still does something. It delivers us from the reign of sin, so that we do not obey its motions, even though vexed and annoyed with the feeling of them. And accordingly, from the exclamation, ‘O wretched man!’ he passes in a moment to the grateful exclamation of, ‘I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.’” - John Owen