I started going to church at the age of 16. During my time as a teenager, I heard dozens of sermons. I must confess that I don’t remember too many of them in particular. But one thing that does stand out to me in special clarity is a story my pastor relayed of a time shortly after he got married.
The pastor stood at the pulpit and drifted to a scene that had taken place early in his married life. He and his wife had gotten into a discussion shortly after he had done something upsetting. She said to him, “You live as though God doesn’t exist.”
Now, I don’t remember what the sermon was over that day. I don’t remember what the Bible passage was or what was preached.
But I do remember that quote.
My pastor, whom I viewed as one who had always been Godly and mature, had just given an account of when his wife called him out for acting as though God isn’t even real. He had even been in full-time ministry at the time. And it made me think.
It still makes me think.
It makes me think because, all too often, I catch myself living as though God were not real. I make decisions without consulting Him. I say things that oppose His heart. I believe things He wouldn’t want a person to believe. I find myself being faithless.
When I look into my heart, I often see a garden full of thistles and weeds – full of selfish desires, of anger, and of ungodliness.
‘My God has a lot of work to do, doesn’t He?’ I say to myself.
In these moments, I am tempted to despair and to give up hope. How can God use me for His work when I fail Him so frequently? How can He even love me? I search my own heart and find that I would lack the patience and the love to put up with such behavior.
If it were not for God, I would be left in my misery.
But it is also in these moments when I am reminded of who God is. I am gently reminded that the God I serve is far greater, far stronger, and far more powerful than my ability to live as though He’s not there.
In 2 Timothy 2:11-13, we read:
If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.
Read that again.
When we fall short – and we will fall short, make no mistake – we can draw encouragement from this passage. When we catch ourselves living as though God isn’t real, or as though He doesn’t really care and won’t really do what He says He will do, we can look to that last section of the passage.
When we catch ourselves being faithless, we can take counsel here.
‘…If we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.‘
Just look at the pattern we see.
A — “If we have died with Him… we will also live with Him.”
B — “If we endure… we will reign with Him.”
C — “If we deny Him… He will deny us.”
D — “If we are faithless… He is faithful.”
Throughout this entire block of scripture, we see a pattern.
If we do good, something good will come. If we do bad, something bad will come. You can see that in lines A, B, and C. In A and B, the doing of good results in the receiving of good. In C, the doing of bad (denying Jesus) results in the receiving of bad (being denied by Jesus).
But what about in D? What if we are faithless?
We would expect that Jesus would also be faithless, based upon the pattern. But that’s not what we see.
Instead, we see that Christ remains faithful in spite of our faithlessness. Why? Because he cannot deny Himself.
Wow.
Even in our darkest moments – our times of faithlessness and wandering – Christ stands faithful. He is steadfast. He is above and beyond our ability to hinder Him. As Jesus said in Luke 19:40, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
In other words, Christ will bring about His will and His Kingdom in spite of our failure.
Do you ever catch yourself praying and longing after Christ, yet still falling prey to sin? Do you ever catch yourself praying fervently one hour, then living as though God isn’t there the next?
I know I do.
There are times when I let the world take over, when I let my own desires run the show. I get uptight, overwhelmed, feeling as though I must do it all, for everything rests on my shoulders. I lose sight of God as the clouds of life roll in.
But then I am reminded – gently, sweetly, and firmly – that the Lord is in control. And it’s ultimately up to Him. Far from letting me drift in my sin comfortably, this gentle reminder brings me back to Him.
As Paul Washer is fond of saying, ‘There are no great men of God. There are only weak and pitiful men of a great and merciful God.’
You see, all the goodness we have comes from God. We have nothing good apart from Him. Every good and perfect gift comes down from Him. The very fact that you’re alive and breathing is a testament to His mercy and His power.
You cannot do anything apart from Him.
And be rest assured, dear reader, that it is only because of God’s direct intervention that we can build His Kingdom. Nobody goes out and singlehandedly builds God’s Kingdom. No one is a spiritual superman or superwoman. No one has it all.
Every man and woman you see that serves God is serving Him because of His power – not theirs.
Every time you see Christ shine through someone, it’s because He is bright enough to blast through the clouds of their fallenness – not because they are just “such good Christians.”
When we are unfaithful to Him – when we forget Him, when the cares of the world sweep over our lives like the tide sweeps over a beach – He remains faithful. He must remain faithful. He is unmoving and unwavering.
So be assured, dear reader, that our God is real. He is more real than the world you see around you, and in the end, only His will and His power will count.
He is more than enough to overcome your weakness. He is more than enough to smash down the stronghold of your sin and bring you into fellowship with Him.
Jesus will bear you on, and He will see to it that His good work in you is brought forth to completion.
As Believers, we are called to do all things to the glory of God. But what does this mean, and what does it look like in the life of a Christ follower?
Jesus is Lord. What does this phrase mean? In this article, we’re taking a look at the lordship of Jesus Christ, and what it means for our lives.
Jesus is Lord.
We hear that phrase often; it’s painted on roadway signs and plastered on church marquees all over the nation.
But what does it really mean?
Philippians 2:9-11 tells us,
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [Philippians 2:9-11, ESV]
Not only is Jesus Lord, Scripture tells us that there will come a day when every person will assent to His lordship.
Clearly, the lordship of Jesus is important. It’s fundamental to who He is, and how He relates to us as human beings.
Here are three aspects of Christ’s lordship over our lives.
1. Jesus is Sovereign
Jesus Christ is God. He is a member of the Trinity, which consists of three separate persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Each is separate, yet also God. They are different, yet the same. The Trinity is a mystery which has been pondered by theologians and scholars of the most brilliant sort for thousands of years. I would venture to say that no human being has ever had a perfectly correct understanding of the Trinity.
The best we can do is approximate.
We can know that there is a Trinity, yet still be unable to fully grasp the nature of the Trinity. It is a mystery that will remain partially hidden to us until we go to be with the Lord.
But I digress. Jesus is God, which means that He is sovereign.
What does “sovereign” mean? From Merriam-Webster, the term ‘sovereign’ is defined as follows:
Possessed of supreme power
Unlimited in extent; ABSOLUTE
Enjoying autonomy; INDEPENDENT
In other words, sovereignty goes beyond merely being “powerful.” A person is sovereign if he or she possesses absolute, unequivocal, unchallenged authority and independence.
Throughout much of the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment, kings and queens in Europe were often referred to as “sovereigns.” Today, independent countries are referred to as “sovereign nations.” This means they have unchallenged and absolute authority to govern the lands within their borders.
Sovereignty is exclusive. It’s pre-eminent. It’s paramount. If someone or something is sovereign, it possesses the highest possible level of authority.
Jesus, therefore, possesses the “highest possible authority.” Let’s ponder that statement for just a moment.
Today, we have sovereign nations. The United States is a sovereign nation. No other nation – not Mexico, nor Canada, nor Russia, nor India, nor any other country – has the right to govern territory within the American border.
That right is exclusively reserved for the government of the United States.
The government has charge over the land; therefore, it is the highest authority in the land. But does the government of the U.S. truly own the land? Furthermore, does the government own the people?
No.
Can the government compel anyone to do anything it wants? No.
Even if the U.S. were a totalitarian dictatorship, like North Korea or the now-defunct Soviet Union, it would still be imperfect in its wielding of power.
Why do totalitarian states set up prison camps?
Because people tend to disobey. Even the most powerful and far-reaching governments the world has ever created cannot enforce perfect obedience on their people.
Thus, the “sovereignty” of any person or any government will be imperfect. It won’t be truly absolute. A king may declare himself sovereign, but he can be disobeyed. He can be attacked by other kings. His authority does not extend perfectly to the furthest reaches of the earth.
But Jesus’ authority IS absolute.
Jesus, being God, is the Creator of all things. Nothing exists that was not created through Him (John 1:3). Therefore, Jesus’ sovereignty is true sovereignty. It’s absolute.
Try as you might, you cannot escape His might.
You can float out into international waters and be free of national government. You can build a rocket, fly to Mars, and declare yourself free from all authority in the world. Odds are, the world will not be able to seriously challenge you from your new perch.
But try as you might, you can never escape God’s grasp. Go to the depths of the ocean, and you’ll find Him. Fly to Mars, and you’ll find Him. Launch yourself to another solar system at the speed of light, and once you arrive, you will be no further from the grasp of God than when you started.
Jesus is sovereign. His authority is absolute. It is based on His ownership of all things.
Nothing – yes, NOTHING – exists apart from His direct creation. Every star you can see, every planet you can visit, every mountain peak and every valley and every prairie you can walk through – all was made by His hand.
He owns all things, including you. You can’t escape Him. You cannot challenge Him. His authority is supreme, never-ending, and all-encompassing.
Jesus is sovereign. This is the basis of His lordship. As the late S.M. Lockridge so eloquently put it, “His lordship is based on His ownership.”
S.M. Lockridge on the lordship of Jesus Christ
2. Jesus is Just
We have established that Jesus, being God, is all-powerful. Nothing exists apart from Him, and nothing is outside the scope of His rule and reign. This is Jesus’ sovereignty.
But what about the character of Jesus Christ? Throughout history, we have seen examples of sovereign rulers and sovereign nations that have abused humanity to extents hardly imaginable.
We have examples of genocide, of mass murder, of exploitation, and of horrendous injustice. The character of a sovereign person or government is crucial. Is Jesus a “just king” or an “unjust king?”
The answer: He is just. In fact, there is no authority more just than His authority.
Jesus is fair. He is just. He is righteous, correct, and perfect. He is infallible. He is the cornerstone upon which all notion of equity exists.
True justice does not exist apart from Christ.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that Jesus sets the rules, and He enforces the rules as they ought to be enforced. It’s as simple as that.
Christ is just. He invented justice.
Any concept that we have of justice is just a reflection – and an imperfect one at that – of the true standard set down by our Lord.
At the end of time, all men and women who have ever lived on the earth will be called forth to give an account of their lives. Hebrews 9:27 and Romans 14:12 guarantee this. It’s also talked about in 2 Corinthians 5:10 and Revelation 20:12.
Everyone – male and female, Jew and Gentile, believer and unbeliever – will stand before God and be judged. And this justice will be perfect. There will be no attorney, no jury, and no painstaking gathering of evidence. All the evidence will be held in God’s hands, because God sees and knows everything perfectly. All thoughts and all actions will be laid bare.
And His sentencing will be perfectly just.
There will be no abuse of power. There will be no corruption. The judge, the lawyer, the plaintiff, and the criminal of this life will stand before Christ as equals. Christ is the perfect judge, the “Judge of judges” if you will, and His sentencing is perfectly correct.
Some people will be sent to eternal damnation (Revelation 20:11-15), and others will be sent to eternal life (Matthew 25:46).
What determines one’s fate? It is not his or her actions in this life. Rather, it’s this: did that person repent of his sins and believe upon Jesus?
Herein lies the most wonderful aspect of Jesus’ justice: He freely gives pardon. We are all guilty apart from Him, but if we turn to Him and believe in Him – trusting Him for forgiveness – then we receive forgiveness. We are declared ‘innocent.’
There are men in this world that have done despicable things which no human court could ever forgive. There are men who have murdered, abused, and slaughtered. Many of these men have been sentenced to life in prison or even death.
But let’s just say that the worst of the worst – a killer, a rapist, an abuser – leads a life of crime and is then sentenced to death for his atrocities. Yet right before his execution, he repents of his sins and believes upon Jesus.
That man is going to Heaven.
There are also men who have done great deeds, who have given to the poor and made the service of humanity the entire thrust of their lives, who will be judged and found guilty by God. Why? Because they never repented and believed upon Jesus.
This is the most perfect aspect of the justice of Jesus. It doesn’t work like our justice. We judge based upon deeds – and we should, because society would fall apart if we didn’t – but God ultimately judges based upon one thing: have we given our trust to Him?
Apart from Christ, we stand condemned. With Him, we stand absolved.
This brings us to the third aspect of Jesus’ lordship:
3. Jesus is Good and Merciful
We need not fear, because Jesus is merciful. And He is good.
Ponder this for a second: the Creator of the universe, the ultimate and supreme authority, is a good authority. He’s the best possible authority. We could not have asked for a better God and a better Savior.
Up to this point, we have shown that Jesus is sovereign and that Jesus is just. But Jesus is also merciful, and He is full of love.
This great power – a sovereign king, a just king, far above our ability to comprehend – freely offered His life for our salvation.
Allow me to be blunt, and to ask a question: who in your life would you die for?
If you’re like most people, you might say that you’d die for your kids. You might say you’d die for your spouse, your siblings, or your best friends. Perhaps there is nobody in this world that you would die for.
My point is this: people don’t die for those they care nothing about. Speaking as a typical human, I would not be inclined to die for a random stranger. I would not be inclined to die even for an acquaintance.
But what about an enemy? What about someone diametrically opposed to me? Would I die for such a person?
If someone were to come to you, spit on you, and tell you how worthless you were, would you turn around and sacrifice yourself for that person?
My guess is no. We would have a tough enough time not fighting back. We would have a tough enough time simply holding our tongue and being civil in return. I doubt we’d be filled with such genuine affection for that person that we would freely offer to die for them.
Where am I going with this? Well, Jesus showed His ultimate mercy for us in that He died for us. But Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6-8).
In other words, He died for His enemies. Those who are without God are against God, and those who sin are sinning against Him. When Christ came to the world, He was hated and spit upon and driven out of cities. He was ultimately captured, beaten, mocked, and murdered.
Yet what did He say during his crucifixion? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34).
That’s right; He was showing sacrificial love to the very men who drove nails into His flesh.
Few of us could imagine even coming close to such a display of sacrificial love and mercy. And we’re humans. We’re flawed. We’re imperfect, and we have all done things that are deserving of punishment.
But as for Jesus? He was the only person who ever lived a perfect life. And He was also the only person who ever offered His life in genuine love for those who hated Him. He deserved that the world would die for Him, but He flipped the narrative and died for the world.
This is mercy. This is love. This is the most tangible, visible, marquee-flashing-on-the-side-of-the-road sign of Christ’s mercy and grace.
He is good. He is merciful. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly just, and impartially merciful. He is entirely good and complete in love.
This is our Savior and our Lord.
How We Respond
The very nature of Jesus’ lordship demands that we respond. We cannot simply file this away in the back of our minds. We cannot pass ‘go’ and collect 200 dollars.
Jesus is worthy of our time. He is worthy of our respect.
And He is Lord.
Therefore, we must submit to Him as Lord of our lives. We must not only acknowledge His lordship in thought, but we must actively submit to Him in deed. Scripture says,
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. [1 John 5:1-3, ESV]
From this, it is clear that we are called to obey God’s commandments. Our first and foremost response to the lordship of Jesus ought to be love, and love for God is keeping His commandments.
There is a lie creeping into the culture – and even into the Church – that we do not have to submit to Jesus. This lie is very widespread. And it is damaging. It is damaging to the faith, to the Church, and to those who believe it.
To put it bluntly, we must submit to Jesus. It is absolutely necessary and absolutely imperative.
We are to come to Christ on His terms, not our own. We are to come to Him with a listening ear, a willing spirit, and a humble heart. We are to come to Him reverently, for He is worthy of all our respect and all our worship and all our honor.
The idea that one can simply believe in Jesus for “life insurance” so that they don’t go to Hell when they die is horribly incorrect. That’s not Christianity; it’s a product of the Western consumer mentality.
Remember: Jesus is all-powerful. He is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-loving. And that same Christ died for you. That same Jesus Christ died for your personal sin.
What must we do in response? Treat Him as holy. Honor Him as set apart and in a tier all His own. We must submit to Him and take His yoke upon us. Scripture assures us that His yoke is easy, and that His commands are not burdensome.
Not only has our Savior been incomprehensibly merciful towards us, He continues to be so in that He is not burdensome. His yoke is easy! His commands are not unreasonable! He is deserving of all our obedience, and it is not unreasonable and impossible to obey Him.
Today, dear Believer, I encourage you to submit your life ever the more fully to Jesus. We all have areas in which we are not fully surrendered to the Lord. We all have areas which we want to wall off from Christ and declare, “Mine!”
But only trust Him; submit fully to Him. Surrender yourself more and more fully to Christ. He is worthy of it. Christ loves you more than you could ever know, and He desires that you would simply lay down your ambitions, your strivings, your desires, and your fears to embrace Him.
One sin can cost you more than you ever thought possible. Here’s how to identify sin, fight sin, and wipe it out of your life.
For two years in college, I lived in a house that was old. I mean really old. It was a two-story brick house that sat in the middle of one of our city’s historical districts. Constructed a hundred years ago, this house had seen a lot over the times.
My old, drafty brick house (2021)
When it was built, it was a bed and breakfast. Some time later, it was purchased by a sorority and used as a sorority house. After that, it was bought by an elderly couple and rented out to various tenants.
My roommates and I were among those tenants.
Now, one thing we quickly came to notice was that this house had no insulation. I literally think that the only thing separating us from the outdoors was two sheets of wood and some drywall.
Whatever insulation it once had must have turned to dust decades beforehand.
To add insult to injury, our old windows were drafty. In the middle of winter, you could hold your hands two feet away from the windows and feel the icy chill on your skin.
In the Midwest, that’s INSANE.
The furnace ran non-stop during the winters. The air conditioner ran non-stop during the summers. During my senior year, we had a cold snap so severe that the high temperature didn’t get above 0 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s about -18 Celsius) for a couple days on end.
We shut all the blinds, closed off the unused rooms, and turned the thermostat down to 68 degrees.
The heater never stopped running.
It was the same deal in the summer. When the temperature hit 95 degrees and the humidity was unbearable, the air conditioner would run constantly just to keep the inside of the house at 75 or 76 degrees.
Naturally, the electric bills that came as a result of all this were insane. Split evenly four ways, my roommates and I would often pay $120 a piece… just for utilities.
At this point, you might be asking me: what does all this have to do with resisting temptation?
I’ll tell you: because one sin – just one – is like a house with drafty windows. It might seem relatively small or even innocent, but just a single drafty window can make it nearly impossible to keep a house warm or cool.
Listen to what the late pastor Bob Jennings had to say about this (you will really want to see this – the video is only about 1 minute long):
His question is so, so relevant. What is this one sin costing you?
If you had a leaky faucet, this one leak could result in thousands of gallons of wasted water. Now, few of us would leave the faucet running all night long. Yet if the leak is slow and hardly noticeable from day to day, one might be tempted to just ignore it.
But to ignore it would cost you.
It’s the same with sin. Just one sin – a regular, recurring sin – is like a leaky faucet or a drafty window. It may be hard to pin down. It may occur so frequently that it blends into the background noise of everyday life. Yet it is that one sin which can cost you so, so much.
Look at what the Scripture has to say about this:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV)
I want us to all pay close attention to the wording here. It says, “…lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely…”
In this verse is an acknowledgement that sin is clever. It’s conniving and sticky. Think about what would happen if you jumped into a puddle of mud. When you get up, you’ll be covered in the mud. It will take more than a few wipes to get rid of this filth, since it clings to you.
Sin does the same thing. It can stick to you like fresh mud.
One sin is also like a weight. It slows you down and robs you of your spiritual energy. One sin gets in the way of your fellowship with God. It is something that saps your vitality and your vigor. It throws up roadblocks in your race as a Christian.
If you went to run a marathon – a hulking, 26.2 mile race – the last thing you would want is to add more weight to yourself. It’s already tough enough to run that distance. But to add a heavy shirt? Heavy shoes? A backpack?
These things make it far harder, if not nearly impossible.
Hebrews is telling us that – if we do have these sins in our lives – they’re like weights. They’re drafty windows. They’re leaky faucets.
They cost us.
Perhaps the reason why you’re not feeling close to God is because you are entertaining a sin. You’re playing with a sin. You have it in mind that, ‘I can have this one thing in my life. I am good in every other area of life. God won’t mind if I have this one lapse, this one “guilty pleasure.”‘
Why do I say this? Because I myself have done the same thing countless times with a huge number of sins. For every finger I may point, I have three pointing back at me.
Quite simply, there is no such thing as a sin without consequences. Even as believers, as saved men and women in Christ, we cannot sin and expect to escape it without any consequences. True, we’re saved from separation with God. We’re guaranteed eternity in paradise with Him. But the law of sewing and reaping is very much active in this life, whether we’re a child of God or not.
Sin has consequences.
If you sin, its negative effects WILL show up somewhere in your life. Those consequences may be small, they may be delayed, or we may not be able to see them directly, but they will be there.
So what is the solution? What do we do about this?
The first thing to do is to take an “audit” of your life.
What is that one sin (or sins) that you keep committing over and over again? What are you allowing in your life that you know you shouldn’t be?
Maybe you’re prone to laziness. Maybe you use foul language. Maybe you’re given to anger. Maybe you idolize something.
Here’s a HUGE one, especially for young people: maybe you lust. Maybe you love to look at others and dwell on how attractive they are.
If this lustful desire is taken further, it leads to pornography addiction. It leads to the acting upon wrongful sexual impulses. This road of sexual addiction can take some people so far that they actually act out upon their urges in a way that is against the law.
Whatever your sin(s) may be, you need to be very intentional about identifying them. Sit down with God; ask Him in prayer to reveal the areas of your life where sin clings to you. He will reveal them, because it is His will (according to 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5) that you would be pure and grow more and more holy in Him.
Secondly, you need to take steps to resist these sins.
One of the more lurid passages of the Bible is found in Matthew 5:29:“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.“
Truly, this is strong language. Jesus Himself spoke those words. What did He mean by them?
The general principle at work here is this: sin is bad, and we should be doing everything in our power to resist it. Contemporary Christianity has largely removed the idea that we need to struggle in our walks with God. To struggle and wrestle sounds foreign to many of us.
Hasn’t Jesus paid it all? Don’t we just need to abide in Him, and He will give us abundant life? Yes and yes.
But there’s also a very real sense in which we have to struggle in our faith. There is work to be done. The Christian life is like running a long race, and that takes a great deal of effort.
Part of that effort is resisting sin.
But notice what Jesus prescribes here: if your right eye causes you to sin, throw it out. We could easily make our own statements that follow this pattern:
If your phone causes you to sin, throw it out.
If your car causes you to sin, stop driving it.
If your TV tempts you, get rid of it.
Essentially, Jesus is calling us to be radical in our dealings with sin. If something causes us to stumble – alcohol, technology, internet, going to a certain establishment, etc. – then we ought to remove it. As Hebrews 12 says, we need to “Lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely.”
In other news, if something causes you to sin, get rid of it. Throw it away. Be radical. Yes, it may sound like overkill. It might even sound foolish. But it is totally worth it! The pleasure you may gain from indulging in sin is no match for the abundant life you will gain by obeying Christ. The Christian life is one of radical counter-culturalism.
It always has – and always will – go against the grain of what society says is normal and natural.
Thirdly, we need to keep in constant fellowship with God and with others.
Out of Hebrews 10, we read:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25, ESV)
From this, we can clearly see the necessity of keeping in fellowship. In fact, the text tells us that we should not only not neglect meeting together, but that we ought to encourage one another and stir one another up to good works.
In a practical sense, this looks like accountability. When we go into fellowship with one another, it ought to be with the intention of encouraging one another to do good works. It ought to be intended to help one another to resist sin and to cut the old, bad things out of our lives.
The Christian life cannot be lived alone. As the saying goes, “There is no such thing as a lone wolf Christian.”
You see, you cannot expect to try to fight sin on your own power and succeed. You aren’t strong enough. You don’t have the power. If you try to fight in your own strength, you’ll fail – whether sooner or later.
But if you tap into the power of God, if you come to Him with your hands open, you will find success. The resisting of sin requires constant communion with Him and with others. It requires community and relationship.
If you’re not already, you should find a strong, Bible-believing fellowship and then become involved there with people who can encourage you directly in your fight against sin. If you are fighting a long-standing sin, the worst thing you can do for yourself is to hide it and isolate from others.
There is value in fellowship and confession of sin, and we do not need to bear any burden alone.
To draw this to a close, allow me to simply say the following: if you’re dealing with these pesky sins that so easily cling to us, you are not alone. Fighting it will be difficult, and may at times even feel like it isn’t worth it. You will experience failure. But the Lord will bless your effort to fight against sin, as it is His will for you to be sanctified – that is, to become more like Him.
So lay aside that sin.
Put it aside as one casting off a heavy weight or a cumbersome load. Have you ever carried something heavy, perhaps a bucket of water or a big rock, and then felt great relief once you were able to drop that thing?
Sin is the same way. We may not realize it, but these sins are like heavy boulders tied to us. They are like drafty windows or leaky faucets. They rob our rest and steal our energy. We get so used to the grueling effects of the sin, but – once they are laid aside – we find the true rest we were searching for.
This in mind, let us resist temptation with all we have. Let us fight the sins that lay hidden in the shadowy corners of our lives.
Christ promises abundant life, and sweeter fellowship with Him and with others. He is greater than anything we could possibly leave behind.
Let us therefore throw off every weight and run to Him.
