The Monday Problem
Easter Sunday is a great day to be in ministry.
The room is full. The message lands. You can feel it—something shifts in people during a good Easter service. Hands go up. Tears happen. For a few hours, the resurrection feels like exactly what it is: the most important thing that has ever occurred in human history.
And then Monday comes.
I’ve talked to enough people in recovery to know that Monday—or Tuesday, or the following Friday night—is where everything gets tested. The feeling from Sunday fades. The craving doesn’t. And the gap between the two starts to feel like evidence that maybe the Gospel is for church, but not for this.
I want to address that directly, because I think we have a preaching problem.
We preach the resurrection as history—something that happened once, that we celebrate annually, that we stake our eternal hope on. All of that is true and necessary. But somewhere along the way, a lot of people came away with the impression that resurrection power is a past-tense reality. Something Jesus did. Something we benefit from eventually.
Paul didn’t see it that way.
Power That Is Present Tense
Read Romans 8:11 again slowly.
“The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you.”
Present tense. Living in you. Right now. The same divine power that took a sealed tomb and filled it with resurrection life is not dormant somewhere in the theological background. It is resident in every believer, every day, in every moment of temptation and weakness and despair.
That’s not motivational language. That’s the plain meaning of the text.
Paul’s consuming desire in Philippians 3:10 is to “know the power of his resurrection.” Not to know about it. Not to remember it once a year. To know it—as a present, living, daily reality.
For the person who wakes up on a Tuesday morning already fighting, this matters more than almost anything else they could hear.
Why Willpower Always Runs Out
Here’s what I’ve observed in secular recovery models, and even in some Christian ones: they tend to work with whatever resources the person brings to the table. Willpower. Peer support. Coping strategies. Step work.
These things can produce a more manageable life. Sometimes an admirable one. I don’t want to dismiss that.
But there’s a ceiling. Because all of those resources are human. And the pull of a life-dominating sin is not just a habit to be managed—it’s a spiritual reality that requires spiritual power to fight.
Ezekiel 36:26–27 describes what God actually offers:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees.” — Ezekiel 36:26–27
New heart. New spirit. God’s Spirit moving from the inside. That’s not a program outcome. That’s resurrection.
The ceiling of human resources is what human effort can produce. There is no ceiling on what the Spirit of God can do in a person who is genuinely yielded to Him.
So What Does This Look Like on a Friday Night?
I get asked some version of this question a lot: “Okay, but what does resurrection power actually look like when the craving hits at 11:00 PM?”
It’s a fair question. Theology that doesn’t touch Tuesday is not very useful.
Here’s what I’ve seen in the lives of people who are genuinely growing in freedom—not white-knuckling it, but actually changing:
They are saturating themselves in Scripture. Romans 12:2 calls it the renewing of the mind. This is not positive thinking. It is the slow, Spirit-enabled process of reorienting how you think about God, yourself, sin, and satisfaction. The person who is daily in the Word is building a different framework for reality—one in which God is more desirable than any counterfeit.
They are fighting by the Spirit, not by willpower alone. Romans 8:13 says, “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” The work is real and active. But it is Spirit-empowered work. The believer picks up the weapon. The Spirit provides the strength to use it.
They are in community. The risen Christ appeared to His people, not in isolation. The church is meant to be a resurrection community—people whose gathered life together is itself a means of grace. This is why Freedom That Lasts insists on the local church as the context for this kind of discipleship. Not because the building has something magical about it, but because the body of Christ assembled together is what God designed.
A Word About Stumbling
I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t address this.
The resurrection does not eliminate the fight. Paul himself wrote, “The evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). If he could say that, so can we.
But here’s what changes: resurrection power changes the “terms” of the fight. Before Christ, a stumble confirms the worst: “I’m an addict. I’ll always be an addict. Nothing changes.” The old identity reasserts itself.
For someone living in resurrection hope, a stumble is serious—but it is not the last word. There is repentance. There is grace that doesn’t run out. There is a community that doesn’t give up on you. And there is the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, who is not finished with you yet.
That is not a small difference. That is everything.
For the Pastor
The question worth sitting with is this: when your people are struggling in the dark on a Tuesday night, do they have access to a community that actually believes Romans 8:11? A community that will remind them of what’s true about them when they can’t hold onto it themselves?
That’s the kind of church Freedom That Lasts is designed to help you build. Find out more at freedomthatlasts.com.
📖 Next Week: Part 3 — Hope for the Hopeless. The resurrection was made for people who have completely given up. | Start or find a Freedom That Lasts chapter at freedomthatlasts.com/Get-Started.
