My reading in "Abide in Christ" this morning was about God's day by day provision. In the desert He provided manna for the Israelites in such a fashion that they had to trust and be dependent on Him daily in order to make it through. In the same way, He provides grace to those who wait on Him in a day by day allotment. This requires me to come at the very least once a day and re-center myself in in His presence; realizing anew my own poverty and hopelessness and yet that I am complete in Christ.

In this train of thought I realized that there are two extremes of that I vacillate between and leave me stuck in sin and frustrated: 1. That this day is all important; I'm creating habits that I'll never get out of; I am a failure always be.
2. That I can cheat today; it's just once; I'll start over tomorrow.
To put it simply, I guess it's just that I either assign too much or too little importance to one day.

The truth is that today is not the end all. Tomorrow we get to start again and His mercies are new every morning. At the same time, the choices I make today are important and God wants me to abide in Him moment by moment, and not miss out on receiving the grace He has for me today because I choose to mess up today and try again tomorrow.

I'm always looking for the key or the plan so that I can cure myself from this sin for the long term. In reality, God has taken care of the long, long term, and now wants me to live and receive on a day to day basis so that I can also grow in Him on a day to day basis. Just as Paul begged to be delivered from his "thorn in the flesh" and God said no, He might leave me with my thorns also so I remember I can't do it on my own. Daily dependence keeps me right where I can receive His best for me.