If this struggle between the Spirit and the flesh is normal, then what's the problem? The problem is that we give up too soon. We quit before the miracle happens, and we never experience what God has planned.

When Hannah and I were in Lamaze classes before Gabe (the 4-year-old, our middle child) was born, our instructor taught us something that impacted me deeply. Predictably, what the women were most afraid of was the pain associated with childbirth. Rather than denying it, or teaching on ways to avoid the pain, she taught the women how to think differently about it. God has created each of us with an instinct to, as Don Williams puts it, "eat, avoid being eaten and procreate". There's something in each of us that works very, very hard to avoid pain, and when we do experience it, it usually exists to say, "whatever you're doing, stop doing it." The problem is, in our fallen state, this instinct is not always correct. Childbirth is a great example of this. Our Lamaze teacher taught us that pain in childbirth is a sign that everything is right. Every instinct in our bodies tell us to avoid it, but in this case avoiding it would result in the deaths of mother and child. The other thing she taught us was to focus on the fact that the pain was not pointless; you get a baby at the end of it.

What a powerful metaphor for re-thinking pain and struggle with sin. The NT authors use childbirth as a metaphor for conversion and the subsequent movement toward Christ, and they use it very intentionally. Through this process God births something new in us, even if it takes our whole lives to do it. The pain and struggle are not senseless, even if our limited perspectives tend to tell us they are. God is the One with the big picture; He has the long view. In the OT, Jacob walks away from his struggle with the angel with two things: a new name (Israel, which means "he struggles/wrestles/contends with God")...and a limp.