Removing the desire to sin
Paul says in Romans 7:15 " For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do."
As Christians we all fall short of the glory of God, however we are able to appear perfect before God because Christ has taken the punishment that we deserve and is within us. His blood covers our sin just as a light eradicates the darkness.
Romans 6 tells us that we were once slaves to sin, however through Christ we are now slaves to righteousness, because Christ is righteous and as we know by 2 Corinthians 5:17 we are new creations in Him ("Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.").
Only Christ is perfect. We are not perfect and will only become perfect once we have been perfected by Christ after we have died and left these sinful bodies of ours behind. This is evident in the fact that we do things that we do not want to do every day, the fact that we think about things we should not and the fact that we even have a desire to partake in ungodly things.
We will always make mistakes whilst on this earth, and God, as merciful as He is, will always be there to forgive us through the blood of Christ. (1 John 1:9 tells us that He is merciful and faithful and will answer our calls to Him.). But why, if we are new creations in Christ and slaves to righteousness, do we have a desire within us to do things which we should not? Why can we find sin so attractive and can it be so hard to abstain from such practices? Why, although we are not slaves to sin anymore, can it feel like we are still plagued by those chains?
The reason is two-fold:
1. We are sinful:
Romans 1-5 and Romans 5 - 8 differentiates between 'sins' (plural) and 'sin' (singular). The first part of Romans talks about 'sins', these are things that we do everyday and that God will always cleanse us of when we have Christ. The latter part talks about 'sin'. This refers to our sinful heart, the disease that we have within us that separates us from God. Even if we do not commit 'sins' we are still sinful nonetheless.
2. What we are surrounded by and what we fill our minds with:
We will always be sinful until the day we die however through seeking God and drawing near to Him, putting off things that are not good for us, we will begin to resemble Him. This will lead to the renewing of our minds. The result of this will be that our will shall be in line with God's will and the number of 'sins' (plural) that we commit will be depleted from what it once was, because we are more Godly.
Whilst we will still be sinful, in terms of we will still suffer from the disease of a sinful heart, we will be able to keep the actual sinful actions that we commit to a minimum the more that we fill our lives with God. This is evident when seeing those who struggle with their faith and then those who are incredibly strong.
How to change our desires:
The answer is pretty straight forward. It is common-sense, however it is certainly not easy. How sucessful you are able to eradicate your sinful desires and your fatal attraction to sin depends on how willing you are to change your life to follow the Lord. Are you able to present your bodies as a living sacrifice as it says to do in Romans 12:1-2, or will you be like the rich man, who walks away from Jesus with his head hung low because he knows that he is not able to give up all of his worldly possessions to follow Christ fully. The cost for him was too much.
We resemble what we are around. We become a part of our environment. For example, people can tell where you are from based on your accent and mannerisms. If you leave your hometown and go to live elsewhere, after a while you begin to lose your accent and those mannerisms and habits that are so common to those who live where you once lived. It becomes harder for people to decipher where you are from.
James 4:8 states: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners; purify your hearts you double-minded."
The more time you spend with God, the more you will begin to resemble Him.
To remove our desire to sin, we must remove the things that cause us to think about sin and then replace those things with things of God.
Lets break that down:
'We must remove the things that cause us to think about sin'. Notice that I'm not saying that we should stop sinning. Do not remove sin, but remove anything that causes us to think about sin! If you have a problem with sexual immorality, it is pointless to stop committing those acts, but then continue to go to the local bar where you used to pick women up! If you have a problem with drinking, don't just quit drinking, stop going to the pub!
Then replace those things with the things of God'. It is not enough to just remove those bad practices from your life because they will soon return! We must then fill that gap that is left with things of God.
You have heard: "Flee from temptation", however this is not enough. By only fleeing temptation this will cause a life of irritation and worse because we cannot do the things that we so crave to do. You will go crazy. It will be impossible to live a truly free and joyous life with Christ if you are constantly trying to tear your mind away from things that you know God doesn't want you to do.
There must be more than fleeing temptation. We must flee temptation AND THEN replace what we used to do with things of God. Flee temptation, THEN seek God.
Colossians 3:2 "Set your mind on things above therefore, not on things of the earth."
It is hard to remove sinful desires when we are constantly surrounded by sin. In our culture sin is constantly pushed down our throats. Turn on the television or read a magazine and you will see all sorts about sex, materialism and alcohol. We need to remove ourselves from these situations. If you struggle with anger, do not watch violent movies. (Personally, my favourite film is Rocky. But I know that every time I watch Rocky, by the end I want to go out and knock somebody out!) If you struggle with lust do not go to places where the girls wear short skirts. Instead, seek God. Fill your time with other things that you know will benefit your heart. Focus on God.
If you plant enough flowers in your garden, there won't be any space for weeds to grow.
The Bible says that where you cast out one demon, seven may return to fill the hole that was left. That is because there is an emptiness that is within us that needs to be filled. The devil makes work for idle thumbs they say! If you take something sinful out of your life and flee its temptations, then the next step is to make sure that you fill that gap that has been left behind with things of God. By doing this you will eradicate your desire to sin and will live abundantly and free in Christ.
Do not be proud and think that you can handle temptation. You cannot. Even if you may not give in to the actual act that you are tempted to do, all of those sinful desires will come rushing back and once again you will be living an irritated and unfulfilled life. Don't stand on the edge of a cliff and see how close to the edge you can go without falling over, rather flee temptation and set your mind on things above!
If somebody tells you not to think about a black cat, your mind will focus on that black cat. Do not surround yourself with sin. If you do, then it will get into your mind and it will have an effect. Only one was able to abstain completely from sin and that was Jesus Christ. Do not give any room for sin! Lest you give it a way to get in!
By fleeing temptation and seeking God, you will renew your mind and destroy those earthly chains of sin over your life. Not only will you be able to refrain from committing sinful acts, but you will desire God and not sin. You will live a truly free and joyful life through Christ.
You must train your heart to desire righteousness and not sin. Boxers practice their combinations hundreds of times over so that their muscle memory can remember what to do. Then, when they are fighting, they can perform the combo without even having to think about it. If they have a certain bad habit, the trainer will make them complete the technique in the right way again and again until their body has completely forgotten that bad habit that had become so comfortable to them.
When we first become saved their is a dramatic change within us. We are changed from sinners to new creations in Christ. You cannot get more opposite than that! But our hearts muscle memories still remembers the way we used to live and the bad habits we have all too easy. We must train our hearts so that it is righteousness that comes natural to it and not sin. We must flee temptation, remove all signs of sin and replace that with things from on High. Focus on that enough and that you will become.
It depends on you and of how much of a sacrifice you are willing to make. Champion boxers train hard. Challengers get sloppy. Are you going to be a champion or a challenger?
-BACChristian
As Christians we all fall short of the glory of God, however we are able to appear perfect before God because Christ has taken the punishment that we deserve and is within us. His blood covers our sin just as a light eradicates the darkness.
Romans 6 tells us that we were once slaves to sin, however through Christ we are now slaves to righteousness, because Christ is righteous and as we know by 2 Corinthians 5:17 we are new creations in Him ("Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.").
Only Christ is perfect. We are not perfect and will only become perfect once we have been perfected by Christ after we have died and left these sinful bodies of ours behind. This is evident in the fact that we do things that we do not want to do every day, the fact that we think about things we should not and the fact that we even have a desire to partake in ungodly things.
We will always make mistakes whilst on this earth, and God, as merciful as He is, will always be there to forgive us through the blood of Christ. (1 John 1:9 tells us that He is merciful and faithful and will answer our calls to Him.). But why, if we are new creations in Christ and slaves to righteousness, do we have a desire within us to do things which we should not? Why can we find sin so attractive and can it be so hard to abstain from such practices? Why, although we are not slaves to sin anymore, can it feel like we are still plagued by those chains?
The reason is two-fold:
1. We are sinful:
Romans 1-5 and Romans 5 - 8 differentiates between 'sins' (plural) and 'sin' (singular). The first part of Romans talks about 'sins', these are things that we do everyday and that God will always cleanse us of when we have Christ. The latter part talks about 'sin'. This refers to our sinful heart, the disease that we have within us that separates us from God. Even if we do not commit 'sins' we are still sinful nonetheless.
2. What we are surrounded by and what we fill our minds with:
We will always be sinful until the day we die however through seeking God and drawing near to Him, putting off things that are not good for us, we will begin to resemble Him. This will lead to the renewing of our minds. The result of this will be that our will shall be in line with God's will and the number of 'sins' (plural) that we commit will be depleted from what it once was, because we are more Godly.
Whilst we will still be sinful, in terms of we will still suffer from the disease of a sinful heart, we will be able to keep the actual sinful actions that we commit to a minimum the more that we fill our lives with God. This is evident when seeing those who struggle with their faith and then those who are incredibly strong.
How to change our desires:
The answer is pretty straight forward. It is common-sense, however it is certainly not easy. How sucessful you are able to eradicate your sinful desires and your fatal attraction to sin depends on how willing you are to change your life to follow the Lord. Are you able to present your bodies as a living sacrifice as it says to do in Romans 12:1-2, or will you be like the rich man, who walks away from Jesus with his head hung low because he knows that he is not able to give up all of his worldly possessions to follow Christ fully. The cost for him was too much.
We resemble what we are around. We become a part of our environment. For example, people can tell where you are from based on your accent and mannerisms. If you leave your hometown and go to live elsewhere, after a while you begin to lose your accent and those mannerisms and habits that are so common to those who live where you once lived. It becomes harder for people to decipher where you are from.
James 4:8 states: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands you sinners; purify your hearts you double-minded."
The more time you spend with God, the more you will begin to resemble Him.
To remove our desire to sin, we must remove the things that cause us to think about sin and then replace those things with things of God.
Lets break that down:
'We must remove the things that cause us to think about sin'. Notice that I'm not saying that we should stop sinning. Do not remove sin, but remove anything that causes us to think about sin! If you have a problem with sexual immorality, it is pointless to stop committing those acts, but then continue to go to the local bar where you used to pick women up! If you have a problem with drinking, don't just quit drinking, stop going to the pub!
Then replace those things with the things of God'. It is not enough to just remove those bad practices from your life because they will soon return! We must then fill that gap that is left with things of God.
You have heard: "Flee from temptation", however this is not enough. By only fleeing temptation this will cause a life of irritation and worse because we cannot do the things that we so crave to do. You will go crazy. It will be impossible to live a truly free and joyous life with Christ if you are constantly trying to tear your mind away from things that you know God doesn't want you to do.
There must be more than fleeing temptation. We must flee temptation AND THEN replace what we used to do with things of God. Flee temptation, THEN seek God.
Colossians 3:2 "Set your mind on things above therefore, not on things of the earth."
It is hard to remove sinful desires when we are constantly surrounded by sin. In our culture sin is constantly pushed down our throats. Turn on the television or read a magazine and you will see all sorts about sex, materialism and alcohol. We need to remove ourselves from these situations. If you struggle with anger, do not watch violent movies. (Personally, my favourite film is Rocky. But I know that every time I watch Rocky, by the end I want to go out and knock somebody out!) If you struggle with lust do not go to places where the girls wear short skirts. Instead, seek God. Fill your time with other things that you know will benefit your heart. Focus on God.
If you plant enough flowers in your garden, there won't be any space for weeds to grow.
The Bible says that where you cast out one demon, seven may return to fill the hole that was left. That is because there is an emptiness that is within us that needs to be filled. The devil makes work for idle thumbs they say! If you take something sinful out of your life and flee its temptations, then the next step is to make sure that you fill that gap that has been left behind with things of God. By doing this you will eradicate your desire to sin and will live abundantly and free in Christ.
Do not be proud and think that you can handle temptation. You cannot. Even if you may not give in to the actual act that you are tempted to do, all of those sinful desires will come rushing back and once again you will be living an irritated and unfulfilled life. Don't stand on the edge of a cliff and see how close to the edge you can go without falling over, rather flee temptation and set your mind on things above!
If somebody tells you not to think about a black cat, your mind will focus on that black cat. Do not surround yourself with sin. If you do, then it will get into your mind and it will have an effect. Only one was able to abstain completely from sin and that was Jesus Christ. Do not give any room for sin! Lest you give it a way to get in!
By fleeing temptation and seeking God, you will renew your mind and destroy those earthly chains of sin over your life. Not only will you be able to refrain from committing sinful acts, but you will desire God and not sin. You will live a truly free and joyful life through Christ.
You must train your heart to desire righteousness and not sin. Boxers practice their combinations hundreds of times over so that their muscle memory can remember what to do. Then, when they are fighting, they can perform the combo without even having to think about it. If they have a certain bad habit, the trainer will make them complete the technique in the right way again and again until their body has completely forgotten that bad habit that had become so comfortable to them.
When we first become saved their is a dramatic change within us. We are changed from sinners to new creations in Christ. You cannot get more opposite than that! But our hearts muscle memories still remembers the way we used to live and the bad habits we have all too easy. We must train our hearts so that it is righteousness that comes natural to it and not sin. We must flee temptation, remove all signs of sin and replace that with things from on High. Focus on that enough and that you will become.
It depends on you and of how much of a sacrifice you are willing to make. Champion boxers train hard. Challengers get sloppy. Are you going to be a champion or a challenger?
-BACChristian
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