In the last post I mentioned three passages about our struggles with sin. There is a fourth passage we should also consider. It’s Matthew 12:43. This is the parable where Jesus tells how when a demon leaves it will wander in the waterless places and after a while will return to find his old house swept clean. He will then bring back seven more demons worse than himself, and the man possessed is in a worse state than before.
For the longest time I would just pass over these verses because I didn’t think they applied to me. After all I’m not demon possessed and was in context of Jesus shaming the Pharisees for asking him to give a sign, which I had never done. Then as I contemplated it, I realized it did apply to me, and I think to all Christians.
Everyone of us has some sin we struggle with. (In my case more than one.) We pray to God to forgive us and ask Him to take it away from us. We then strife to remove it from our life and to be “good.” And for a while we succeed. We’re very pious and the sin is out our life. For a while. Then we slip up and the sin comes crashing back into our lives and we revel in it more than we ever did before. All of this results in our self-loathing, and our praying more fervently than ever for God to take this sin from our lives. Then the process starts all over again.
I know it was that way for me for years. It seemed the more I prayed the worse it was. Then this passage caused the light to dawn on me. The problem was that I was asking God to take something out and not put anything in its place. I didn’t understand that the spiritual realm is like the physical realm in that it abhors a vacuum. Once I realized this, I began praying for God to take pride, anger, envy, lust, greed, gluttony, and sloth form my heart and, in their place, put love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
This made all the difference. Don’t get me wrong, I still stumble from time. I like a recovering addict, I have to keep constant guard, or I’ll fall back into my old ways, but my sin no longer consumes me as it once did.
#Sin #Demons #Fruits of the Spirit