I’m not a very good man. 
In fact I’m rotten.  I love God, but I don’t do the things I want to do for him.  I find I do the things I REALLY don’t want to do. The things which I figure would make God sad. Things which would make God hang his head in shame. 
I feel the burden of my continual failure drags me to the pit of despond.  I am too scared to look up at his face for fear of that great lovely face hung with sorrow and disappointment.  The feeling that fairly soon he is going to shrug, turn and walk sullenly away.

We are told to put the sin to death.  Somehow it feels I am just covering it with a big blanket.  When I push down on one part it bulges up in another area. It feels like I am flailing and stabbing and doing my best to kill it but all I end up doing is spinning around bright red in the face, out of breath and thoroughly dejected because of my failure.
 
A strange thing occurred to me the other day.  I have no idea how to ‘put sin to death’?

I had been praying and felt my usual spiritual flail at the sin, but realised that this was not working. I prayed for God to thump it, coz my hits weren’t working. So he did. It was still the black ooze of sin it was just flatter, I looked up at God confused, he looked at me levelly waiting to see my next step. I asked him to stab it, still just black goo with a hole in it. Throw it away; black goo somewhere with my name written on it.  Blow it up; slightly charred black goo, which quickly just became black goo again.
 
This was worse than before!
 
I then asked God to pass my sin through his blood. I watched it come out of the other side as a beautiful lily. I was confused what this odd vision meant so asked God. ‘I thought I had to put sin to death?’ ‘Yes’ I felt the answer come back, ‘but you didn’t ask WHO’s death to put it to’.

If we love God and try to conquer sin in our life, and to walk the way of the Lord, without deceiving ourselves, how can we not conquer sin and death?  In fact it isn’t our responsibility!  I’m not the author and perfector of my faith. That’s not my job. It’s his!  He is NOT standing there head hung in shame, he standing there cheering me on, he really is the father in the prodigal son story.  But he is that man EVERY time I sin. Running towards me, to help, encourage and teach, proud of me even! Besotted with my every hair.  Perfecting my faith through his blood. 
 
Putting my sin to him on the cross is the only place of death. And the sin/death can be born again from that blood. Resurrected as that beautiful bloom.  Gossip resurrected as a caring listener with a quiet mouth, lust as a glorifying respect for the opposite sex in friendship and marriage, revenge turned to forgiveness, hate turned to love.

May God bless you in your fight.