During the day today I did devotions and worked on Photoblog. From 4 to 9 I went over to Anna's house and hung out there with other friends. In the middle I went home, traded cars, and ate dinner. Anna had a friend from her college named Theo over today, and we got a group together for some fun times.

We spent a large portion of the night playing pictionary... It was the first time we got through the whole board. In the middle, we stopped drawing and switched over to charades like we did last time. We were tied with three squares remaining, but the girls ended up winning by two or three squares. Oh yeah: we played co-ed again.

Earlier in the hangout, we gorged ourselves with nachos. We also had a dinner together that included a bread that they baked earlier on. Whenever we hang out at anna's house, we spend a lot of time at the table eating (which is awesome of course).

Devotion time notes:

Romans 7

For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
Romans 7:5

Matthew Henry offers a metaphor of people being carried along by the stream of sin. The law was simply a dam that held back water, but also caused it to be stronger and higher than it would have naturally been. Though there was the law, the direction, desire, and tendency of people was still sin. With salvation through faith, we are no longer being carried along in the stream of sin, but are instead following the stream of righteousness.

But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Romans 7:6

Previously with the law, men were bound by sin and "served" according to the outward appearances dictated by the law. By dying to sin, we have freedom and are enabled to serve the Spirit and not just the letter of the law.

If we were still under the law, we would not have the peace that comes through faith. By faith, we are freed from the strict letter of the law so that we may pursue God, righteousness, and holiness without fear of sin and falling short of God's glory.

Though we are saved by faith, the law is not useless and the law is not sin. It is not what causes us to sin, or binds us to sin. The law in itself is good and is useful. By the law, we can look upon ourselves as one looks in a mirror, to examine and deal with the sins that we find within ourselves. Though we are not bound by the law anymore, the law enables us to know what sin is, in order that we may flee from it and pursue righteousness.

If there were no law of God, then there would not be sin, for sin is breaking the laws that God has set for us, and falling short of his perfection.

Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
Romans 7:9

When Paul was ignorant of the law, he considered himself alive apart from the law, though in fact he was dead in sin. Indeed, when we do not consider the holiness of God, we are blind to our own transgressions and it is easy to consider ourselves morally "good". In such a state, our perception of morality is relative and subjective, for we do not consider the absolute, objective holiness of God.

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
Romans 7:18-19

God, help me to be one who can carry out desired good and flee from undesired evil.