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Do you have a sin problem? If you are like me the answer is “No, I find it very easy to sin!” Well, we are going to look at the root of our sin problems. Many times we can get stuck in this cycle. You know you’re saved, you have gone to church a long time. You try and read your Bible when you think of it, and you even pray sometimes too. When preachers preach you feel really bad about the sin that is in your life. Sometimes you even ask God to forgive you of your sin, but you normally go right back to that sin within a week or so.
You are stuck in this cycle, you know you’re a true follower of Christ, but you sin, and then you ask for forgiveness, and then you struggle for a little while and then go right back to the same sin. If you are honest, you long to see real change happen but it alludes you. You are hopeless.
I believe many of us have misdiagnosed the cure for our sin problems. You can’t win a battle unless you understand the enemy. If you want to kill a werewolf you shoot him with a…silver bullet. If you want to kill a vampire you put a stake through his…heart. If you want to kill a mummy you…guess just hit him with a car?
You need to understand your sin issues before we can really conquer them for good. Jimmy Needham says it this way: “We are tempted to look at our sin from the judicial point of view. God gave us a law, we violate that law regularly, and now our jobs as Christians is the figure out how to stop violating his law.” But here is what the Bible says about looking at our sin from just a judicial point of view.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. – Romans 7:4-6
We are no longer under the law, the do’s and dont’s. Religion. We are called to something higher something better. God doesn’t just want us to obey the law He wants us to bring forth spiritual fruit. Your walk with God is not about doing it is about being.
Romans 6:14-15 says, For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!
We aren’t under the do’s and don’t anymore we are under grace – we are under the love and forgiveness of God through His son. When he looks at us, He sees Jesus His son. Verse 15 tells us that He loves us where we are but refuses to leave us that way. He wants us to walk in a newness of life. He wants us to be like Jesus.
See, our problem is not that we break God’s law and need to figure out how not to break God’s law. In Jeremiah chapter 2 God himself tells us our issue, the right diagnosis, and it’s not a problem of breaking the law. He is speaking to the people of Israel who had this same problem, the sin cycle. They leave Egypt, they begin to complain, God punishes them, and they get right with God. Then they worship idols, God punishes them, they get right then they disobey God and won’t go into the promised land and God punishes them they get right, etc. Here is what God said about these people’s real problem, and I believe our problem is as well.
For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns (or wells) for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. – Jeremiah 2:13
God says, “You have 2 problems: 1. You don’t want what I have. 2. You try and fill yourself with empty things. I have this living water. I want you to have something that can satisfy you, but you rather try and dig your own wells and cisterns that are broken, and won’t even hold water. See the crime isn’t so much about do’s and don’ts. It’s about how Jesus is standing before you today “waiting to be wanted” but we don’t want Him. God wants nothing more than for you to sit, be quiet, and get to know Him. God wants to fill you. He wants to take away your emptiness. He wants to take away your guilt. He wants to fill you with this amazing joy, peace, and comfort.
So the cure for your sin problem is not willpower or trying harder. The cure is feasting on Jesus and what He did for you on the cross, so much so that you no longer crave the things of this world. Treasure Jesus, feast on Jesus, want Jesus, pursue Jesus, push toward Jesus. As you do this, you can have no other reaction but to grow in your love for Christ.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Let’s stop the cycle, let’s ask God to give us newness of life. To change our appetites. Stop trying to find water on your on, with broken cisterns that don’t hold water. Instead, go to Jesus the fountain of living water and never thirst again! – Colossians 3:2