Like all people, I struggle with sin. In fact, a particular sin. I’m sure there are lots of others in the same situation. There is some sin that seems to consume them, and they go to God begging him in prayer to remove this desire to sin from their lives. They will even push the sin away, and for a while have the burden taken from them. But Satan is crafty, he waits until you are tired, lonely, or just bored, and he sets up the situation for you to sin again. And of course, you do. However, it’s ten times worse than before. You’re like an alcoholic going on binge and you’re filled with self-loathing. At least that’s how it was for me.

As I cried out in my pain for God to take this away from me, I couldn’t understand why he left me in this wretched state. Then one day I was reading Matthew chapter twelve. In it, Jesus told of how an unclean spirit would go into waterless places, and when finding no rest would return to the house it left to find it clean and in order. The spirit would then call seven more to follow him and make the person state even worse than before.

When I read that, I saw my own situation. I would stop sinning for a while only to return to it with a greater appetite and I was worse than before. Then like a lightning bolt, it struck me, the unclean spirit returned to find the house empty.

Just like the natural world, the spiritual world abhors a vacuum. For years I asked God to remove my sin, but I never told him what to put in its place. That was when I started praying for God to remove my sin from my heart and put the fruits of His Spirit in its place. And surprise, surprise things got so much better.

Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with that sin, but it’s not so all consuming. My stumbling is rarer and shorter in intensity and duration. We pray incompletely when we pray for the removal of sin but forget to pray for the filling of righteousness.

#Sin, #UncleanSpirits