Born again or just here again? Walking through the Glendale Galleria with not too much money to spend after the holidays, I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place. There are things I need to buy with the money I have left, and here, I happen to be surrounded by the things I've always wanted but, obviously, don't need. I often run into these types of sticky situations, because I end up leaving the mall with bags of "stuff" that I'll put down never to pick up again and a wallet full of receipts. Why do I do the things I don't want to do and don't do the things I promised myself I would do? I discovered that the apostle Paul had the same kind of problems. The question is this: Is this the average dilemma of a true Christian or is it a picture of life without the power of the Spirit? In this article I will analyze the verses that make up Romans 7 and discover for myself whether Paul is not still living by the power of the Spirit or that these are issues I should continue to address in my born-again life. Looking through the opening scriptures of chapter 7, I realize that 1-12 are written in the past tense and the verses about defeating oneself are written in the present tense. This shows me that the struggle within Paul is going on as he is writing the rest of this chapter. This is not something he has just experienced in the past if you read the frustrations he expresses in verse 15: “what I do I do not understand, because I do not practice what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. this is the cry of a current struggle. Reading in the context of Romans 6,7 and 8, Paul has just finished stating in verse 18 of chapter 6 that we have been freed from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. This means we are no longer