week 15 – Determination (Photo credit: Sweet Dreamz Design)

Have you been consistently overcome by a certain sin?  You love The Lord Jesus.  You know the commands of the Lord.  You desire them almost all the time.  Your prayer life begins to shine like the sun.  Then “BANG”, there’s that hideous sin again.  It is like a punch in the face from a steel beam.  And you fall AGAIN!!!!!!!

You’ve done your research.  You’ve looked to every possible answer.  And still you continue to falter.  The answer is far more simple than you might think.  And I know that statement is simplistic in its very nature.  There is a place of victory.  And I will speak of it as I have come to understand it.

We are told to love our neighbor, to do good to those who hate us and spitefully abuse us.  We are told to turn the other cheek to he who would strike us.  And there is not one Christian who has not heard of such things.  In the way of men these things DO apply.  But in the way of spiritual warfare this is not necessarily the case.

What the Lord is pointing out is that our war is not with other men.  It is with spiritual forces that we war.  And to take out our frustration on men is forbidden.  Here is what I have found in regard to besetting sin.

1. Learn to hate that sin.  Hate what is evil and cling to what is good.

2. Seek the Lord’s guidance in how to approach that sin.  There is only One who is Good.  From Him alone comes the commands that give life.

3. Recognize that you don’t have to know “Why” that particular sin is within you.  You are not a victim!  You are a man or woman who has entered into the warfare of the soul.  This is your opportunity to join the saints in the arena of testing.  The animals threaten to tear the flesh from your body.  Do Not Fear!  Join them with gusto!

4. Allow yourself to become spiritually violent against that sin.

The last item is the focus in overcoming.  Spiritually violent does not indicate that you take any physical or mental action against anything in this world.  Rather we learn to desire to rip that sin to shreds.  This is what it means to hate sin.  Only when we have come to the end of our ability to take care of this problem civilly will we finally turn to a violent hatred of what is within us.  This advent of violence in our hearts must be focused on the sin, not what causes it.

The world will continue to beckon us to sin.  Pay them no mind.  Rather turn your hatred to that specific string of events you have come to know so well.  You know where the sin begins within you.  And you know the certain stages of attack it always follows.  As quickly as you can SMASH that enticement as you would a black widow spider on your arm.

This is the war we all fight, my friend.  If you are still fighting then you are still part of the war.  Take heart.  Take vengeance against the wickedness within you.  Fight with all your might, and God will give you strength!