One Another

Finding God.   L. Crabb

If we are to find God as He wants to be found, if we are to know Him in a way that frees us to live with joy and purpose and self-control, then we must not work primarily to solve our problems; we must rather cooperate with God's work to disrupt and destroy this fallen structure. 

This idea was a rather novel one for me. The idea of not working on a problem we have. I am not certain---as I try to work on stopping my problems /sins with God's help, knowing after the time I have spent working on them alone that really I cannot fix/stop them. So I am a little unsure if I am reading this wrong, and he means to not work on fixing our problems alone or what. 
Many times we do work on fixing our sins alone. We don't tell anyone of them (like they don't notice, right?), we don't ask others for ideas...we just try and stop the sin. Again, this does not work. 
Our sin nature is very strong. It is fed, after all, by demonic presence, the fallen world we now live in, and our own wicked desire to be a mini-god. It was our desire with demonic presence that drove us to choose against living with God---it only makes sense that that desire and idea still reigns today. Of course we cannot walk away from sin alone. 
With God's presence choosing us (predestination by knowing we would pick Him with His touch---I believe He touches everyone regardless, but many of us are not willing to give up our mini-godness and walk away hand-in-hand with Him), we can leave mini-godness alone. Without picking His touch to our own misguided leadership, we cannot battle sin away. Sin will be our Master, even when we manage to tamper it down enough to not be disgustingly obvious. We can "manage" now, when refusing to ask for God's help, to quiet many sins down to a dull roar. But they are always there...many causing great torment, such as anxiety, depression, anger, OCD, PTSD, physical illnesses---self destructive behavior---bulimia, cutting, sexual perversion---sin is always there, always a Master, and an extremely cruel Master. 
Now then, if we take God's hand, focus on His good Word, lean on His Holy Spirit, and accept the gift of His Son, we will be better prepared to leave our old Master, Sin, and begin a good journey. With those relationships, we can depend on God to help us take steps to banish Sin. I still think that we must work on Sin, work on leaving it behind, but we can more easily do so with God's great love. With His presence, we have the power to ban demonic presence that may be influencing our sinful nature. With His presence we have His Holy strength to stop sinful behavior...although sinful behavior sometimes takes a lifetime to drop. 
We must be ever faithful, asking for help from Him, but also from those about us. Many of us have already won the battle on one or another sin, and can give courage, help, and be an accountable presence for others. We must trust others with our silent battles...because many of those around us are fighting the same hard and good fight. God Himself said it was not good for man to be alone---and that was in the perfect Garden. I think that means, even more so in this broken world, that we need each other. Be willing to help others---and if that is a weakness, ask God (and others) for help. We need God desperately...but we also need each other's shoulders to cry upon, to hold and love and help.