Hi Bible4life,

The fact is that you will never overcome sin by your own flesh (c.f. Romans 7) - it is a method bound to fail. You are depending on your strength to please God - that's not the Christian life.

Shift your dependence to Jesus! Focus your thoughts on Him - trust that He loves you, and that He lives in you. You will then experience the abundant supply of His life to you.

The biblical meaning of repentance is very different to what you are assuming here. It is not about trying to correct our mistakes, overcoming our sins, or be a better person. If you look up the respective Hebrew and Greek words, repentance involves turning to God - you turn your face towards Him.

Merely feeling remorse for sin without turning your face to God is not biblical repentance. An important point to emphasize: You don't clean up your sins in order to turn to God, but you turn to God to overcome sin (as illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son).

You need to stop thinking about sin, and stop reviewing your sins and your emotions. Instead, think of Jesus - who *unconditionally* loves you. His love involves fully accepting you, made possible by His finished work on the cross.

So stop being sin-conscious - be Christ-conscious!

Looking down has not helped you all these years - using the same method again and again will not yield different results (that's an Einstein quote). So why not try looking up? That's the only way (John 14:6)... and it works!

I had earlier recommended Bill Gillham's "Lifetime Guarantee" book. Have you grabbed a copy yet?

I also posted Dustin Horstmann's testimony on the previous page (in two parts). He describes a similar predicament to you, and shares how he learnt to turn to Christ to overcome his pornography addiction. He provides an excellent exposition of the gospel too - that will help show you the errors in your understanding concerning the faith.

Fundamentally, your flawed understanding of God and His gospel has hindered you from being confident in His love and His acceptance. All your struggles (thoughts, oppressions, sinful habits) are only symptoms of the "misbeliefs" which you have adopted. You won't get anywhere trying to nip the symptoms - you have to address the root, that is to replace those misbeliefs with the truth.

God wants to heal your misunderstanding of Him and His Word. That will impart the life, joy, peace and freedom which you crave for. Be open to Him - give God a chance to lead you to the truth.

So (i) ask God to teach you the truth, and then (ii) renew your mind with the truth. Set aside 5 to 10 minutes a day, and meditate on truths - such as God loves you, you are dead to sin and Christ lives in you. Meditate on what these truths mean, and trust God that these truths are TRUE!

This is a good devotional on how to renew your mind: http://www.lifetime.org/2014/09/being-close/

Bible, may I ask:

How old are you, little brother?

Are you married? Kids?

What kind of work do you do?

And, are you open to advice and not only prayer?

_________________
Tim

I am 29 and yes i am married for almost 7 and a half years.

Oh yeah i work at walmart in the meat department and yes i am willing to here advice. I have heard a lot of wisdom, but i don't seem to be able to get anywhere with it. Not that i have blown it off, but their is something effecting me so strongly I can't overcome this.

Yes this is true you can't overcome this in your own efforts, strength or by self at all.

Do you have unholy desires?

Are you ready for this? GOD Does not expect you to deal with them. YOU CAN NOT!!

This is why Christ died because you could not!!!

Here are some quotes from Dustin Horstmann's testimony

When I wasn't established in the purpose of the Law in relationship to the gospel, I felt that because I was continually giving into temptation, I wasn't trying hard enough, and so I wasn't doing my part in my relationship with God. I was living under the Law because I felt I had to try harder to be accepted by God. I didn't realize that that sincere desire was keeping me from presently experiencing the Life of the Spirit to walk free of sinful passions.

Then the Father showed me His love. His love was to give me His Son to live through His Life.

But in order to experience this love, I needed to have a biblical understanding of the purpose of the Law. It was given to show me my helplessness so that I would trust in Christ alone for acceptance. It was not given to encourage me to try harder, which nullifies grace. And so trusting Christ alone as my acceptance from moment to moment, and not my efforts, I am able to experience the power of the Spirit to walk in new Life from moment to moment.

I learned about God's love when I learned He never wanted the Law to be on my shoulders as it was. It was always to point me to His Son so that I could see His love expressed in forgiveness and new Life.

God showed me the love of a Christ who is always with me because He's always my strength. He showed me that He has given me His Son to live through, right here and now. What great love!

I never wanted to be a person who relied in my own works. I felt like the Father was putting the Law on my shoulders because I wasn't strongly established in the Word concerning the purpose of the Law, the gospel, faith and the power of the Holy Spirit.

I believed that righteousness was a free gift but because my foundation wasn't established, in the moment of temptation, I would shift from trusting Christ alone for acceptance and trust in my efforts to overcome my evil passions.

I didn't realize that this very thing kept me in bondage to those evil passions because the Spirit doesn't work while our mind is set on the flesh by trusting our self.

I saw God's love when The Holy Spirit revealed to me that He wasn't putting the Law on my shoulders to keep. He showed me that the Law rather is to show me my helpless bondage to sin so that I would my need for His Son-not so that I would try harder, which doesn't honor Christ.

God wanted me to freely turn to His Son and behold the glory of His love for me in the face of His Son. When I saw this, I immediately turned to Him, for I am born again and desire to live by faith. I just needed to be established in the truth and that is what I desire for you.

Before, when I faced temptation, my faith was in myself to say no to my desires. "My desires are my responsibility." But the Lord came to me and basically said, "You don't have the power to make yourself the kind of loving person whose fruit is healthy, Godly desires. Therefore, glorify the Righteous One."

We do NOT have the power to change any desire we have. In fact we should not even try. Christ has fully dwelt with all of our desires on the cross. All of our old desires were taken away and were destroyed by Christ on the Cross. Now we have His Life and His Godly desires in Him.

The enemy wanted me to believe that I could and had to try to overcome my temptations before God would be pleased. But I knew I had to stop trying all together and look to Christ as my victory in order to experience His victory. I couldn't trust my effort and His at the same time.

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Charles Spurgeon on detecting the voice of the devil:

"Now I will give the poor sinner a means of detecting Satan, so he may know whether his convictions are from the Holy Spirit, or merely the bellowing of hell in his ears. In the first place, you may always be sure that that which comes from the devil will make you look at yourselves and not at Christ. The Holy Spirit's work is to turn our eyes from ourselves to Jesus Christ, but the enemy's work is the very opposite. Nine out of ten of the insinuations of the devil have to do with ourselves… "You do not repent enough"" that is self. "You have got such a wavering hold of Christ" that is self. Thus the devil begins picking holes in us; whereas the Holy Spirit takes self entirely away, and tells us that we are "nothing at all, - but that "Jesus Christ is all in all."

"Nothing is to be trusted to but the finished work of Jesus Christ upon Calvary's bloody tree! No feelings, no emotion, no believing, no conversion, even, must ever be put into the place of that one eternal Rock of refuge—the blood and merit of Jesus Christ! Fly there, poor Soul! Whatever you are, or are not, fly there! Cast your guilty self on Christ and rest there, for there alone can you find salvation! Learn this lesson - not to trust Christ because you repent, but trust Christ to make you repent—not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to Him that He may give you a broken heart - not to come to Him because you are fit to come, but to come to Him because you are unfit to come! Your fitness is your unfitness. Your qualification is your lack of qualification. You are to be nothing, in fact, and to come to Christ as nothing - and when you so come, then will repentance come!"

Eph. 1:17-20,"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,"

thank you

If it's any help John I went through a terrifying time like this, I ended up walking the streets at night for 6 months in a city, I was depressed and extremely scared and wondering where Christ had gone in my life. As the love I once had for Christ and others had gone from me.
I didn't know at this time it was the beginning of Christian maturity. This being brought into the wilderness and led to a place where God seemingly doesn't exist and being dumped there was something I never expected a loving God to do. I had previously only ever known the exuberance of the spiritual life where I would pray for others and see immediate healing. The wilderness is something we hardly hear people talking about. It's a place for his special ones, his loved ones.

The mother eagle throws it's child out of the nest much to the terror of the poor thing. If you think God is different from the eagle it created then you haven't experienced God's full nature... the one who catapults a person into the wilderness without food and water.

Reading the Bible didn't work for me and neither did praying. That was a most frightening thing,
I can see now that true maturity and growth comes through discipline and obedience, of hearing the still small voice of God and obeying him and not through relying upon external resources that don't have the power in themselves to convert us to a life of obedience and the dethroning of our self life, the life that hates God.

see if this matches anything Christ is saying to you , if you would have known me years ago I would have been only preaching faith and grace to you.

I refer to self discipline as a means to reaching the destination God wants us to move to and not a life of never reaching it.

_________________
David Keel