Obtaining Victory Over Sin - NetBibleStudy.com

Victory Over Sin 28to diagnose our true condition. Temptation is God’s X-ray machine, discovering thehidden conflicts that need attention.What Does God Want to Accomplish?God has a larger purpose in wanting to show us our inner self. Unfortunately,we too often clutch the smaller purpose: --- we desire freedom from sin to avoidembarrassment –- be relieved of guilt -- or to save a marriage. However, the deeperissue we often avoid is our rebellion against God. A man may be dishonest in hisbusiness practices: a woman may have a spirit of unforgiveness – both want to be freefrom a nagging conscience, but they may not be willing to deal with their basic attitudeof defiance of God’s authority.Genuine repentance is never easy. To confess our sins means that we agree withGod that we have sinned; it also means that we agree that the sin must be forsaken.Those who confess their sins, intending to repeat the same action, are only partiallyrepentant.Such incomplete repentance leads to a downward spiral of repeated failure.Confession means that we admit our sin and give God permission to remove it from ourlife. I am not suggesting that if one repents, then commits the same sin again, that hisrepentance was not genuine –- (for, if that were true, none of us could ever claimforgiveness) –- because we all have truly confessed some sin – repented of it – and then,later, find our self committing the same sin over. But there needs to be a willingness topart with the sin, and a submission to God’s verdict on the matter. Apart from such anacknowledgment, our intentions are self-centered. We are inquiring how forgivenesswill benefit us instead of considering how we have offended God.But we must not stop at this point – God wants to draw us beyond our repentancefor sin – to Himself. He wants to use our struggles to lead us into godly living. His willis not merely that we be free from sin; He wants to conform us to the image of His Son,Jesus Christ. Delivering us from sinful habits is only a step in the process. Washing thestains from our life is His prelude to changing us into the Spirit-filled person God wantus to be.Let me tell you of a young man who was caught in the grip of a morally wrongsexual lifestyle. He was a Christian and struggled with this sin for a long period of time.Eventually God radically changed him, altering his whole life style. Now he is a godly,Christ-like, person. Through finding freedom God taught him principles ofcommitment that he has been able to apply to every area of his life. He memorizedmore than 200 passages of Scripture during his agonizing struggle. His sinful habitdrove him to seek God and become intimately acquainted with the Almighty. At first,he was occupied with his problem: but then he became occupied with God.