¹¹ For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, ¹² training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, (Titus 2:11-12 ESV)

We are given, here in our passage today and many other places in scripture, a clear cut recipe for living a godly life. So why do we struggle so hard to do so?

First of all, we are human and we suffer all of the traits of being human. We can be short sighted, petty, conceited and condescending. We have a lot of negative human traits to stack alongside our innate desire to sin and give in to worldly passions.

But secondly, God provides a lot of divine traits to counteract the negative. The simple advice here to live a self-controlled life is key to this. As we become self-controlled in the small things it leads us to a life of being so in greater things. We do not have to start by trying to tackle the mountains in our lives. No, God points us first to learn upon the small slopes and hills that come our way.

Little by little we find ourselves living more and more godly lives as it gets easier to tackle our humanness. In these little ways we are able to build a life that reflects God to this present age.