I already have a blog where I keep all my creative work. My life is changing a lot at the moment and there are lots of issues, beliefs and such that I find myself musing for hours over. I've decided that it might be a good idea to write my musings down somewhere. I have no idea where this will go so it will be an adventure, an exciting one I hope.

Saturday 24 September 2011

Overcoming sin

Other people can pray for you to be strong enough to endure the trials in your life, but you need to conquer your own Goliath. The Apostle Paul never prayed for his, or anyone else's problems to go away, instead he prayed that people would know God and his great love for them, and that they would be strengthened through the Holy Spirit to endure anything whilst maintaining a good temper. In Luke 4, Jesus outlasted the devil for forty days and forty nights. The devil threw everything he could at him but Jesus walked out of the wilderness victorious. The devil will try to do the same with us, to move us away from the will of God to try get us to prove something, like he did with Jesus. Nobody can ever be truly be free until you have absolutely nothing to prove and nobody to impress. When you reach the point where you can be the true you and know that you are genuinely loved and accepted for being that way then will you be free. With God's help we can all get through the devil's trials and come out victorious on the other side. At which point we can confess that we can do all things in Christ who strengthens us. Growing is painful, it challenges our mind greatly, but we need to be happy with it and the changes it produces, some of which will be quite staggering. Every time we grow a little as God helps us the things that the devil throws at us become less painful. We need to keep in our mind that Jesus was tempted in every way possible and he never sinned. We need to aspire to be this strong, and we can do it if we put all our faith in the Lord but it will take a lifetime to achieve. The reason that Jesus told his disciples in Gethsemane that he would not be talking for much longer (John 14:30) was that he knew that anything we say when we are upset and frustrated is nothing that actually needs to be said. He knew that if he opened his mouth, the devil will dive in and take some of the power back off Jesus. The experiences that Jesus had ensured that he would understand every single trial that we would go through. We need to keep a real close check on our feelings. Anger, jealousy, bitterness and similar can ruin so much; our life, other people's lives, yet we persist in expressing negative feelings. The devil loves this, watching us go around and around the same mountain, time and time again. You must learn not to be ruled by your emotions.

Get rid of the flesh that is out of control! Stop feeding it. Constantly repeating bad behaviour gives your flesh strength instead of denying it so. Anything that you don't feed will get weaker and weaker until it dies and no longer has any power over you. The first few times will be hard and may hurt but it will get easier and easier each time that you do it successfully. You can change any bad habit if you have the will.

Kill the flesh by not feeding it!

Know your weaknesses!

Pray!

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