When sin is overwhelming…
When I was 16 I was addicted to pornography. If you don’t know about porn, it is a life-consuming sin. It not only affects you spiritually, it affects you emotionally, and physically. The worst part about this sin is that you think you can control it, that if you wanted to you could stop, but you cant. The really sad thing is that I was so ingrained into this particular sin that there was no way I could just get up and leave. They only way I could leave was through war.
At a point in anyone’s addiction, the person tends to seclude themselves from others. Thus not only affecting them but also those around them. So while I was around people I acted as though I were fine, but really I was sad, lonely, tired, beaten, and scared. No matter how hard I tried, I could never cover myself fully and appear normal. In my try to reach normality I lost who I was.
You see if sin is not brought out into the open, it will manifest itself within you. In Acts 16, Paul and Silas where walking round town talking about Jesus to the town people. While they are doing this, a girl follows them and yells out, “these men are servants of the Most High God!” (17). She did this for many days. Until one day Paul got fed up with this girl. He stopped turned around and yelled, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her (18).
Notice how Paul didn’t turn around and tried to talk her into calming down. He never even thought of it. He IMMEDIATELY rebuked her in the name of Jesus. In the same way, we should never flirt with temptation. We need to rebuke it automatically in the name of Jesus. If we flirt with sin we will end up sinning. Sin is so aggressive, that if we are not progressive in our pursuit of Jesus we will end up tangled in sin. For a long time I thought that I could control sin, like a vending machine. Where if I wasn’t hungry or didn’t want a snack I would not go to it, but in truth sin more often comes to you than you to it.
Sin is not something that you can cover with some makeup; sin is a disease that deforms the body. It will takeover in the long run. There is hope though. That is through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. He has dominion over sin and is stronger than any temptation in the world. He can deliver you from the valley of death, but he wont until you let him. Give it all to him and you will be taken care of.
(Source: discipleintheway)
