Intimacy-The Power Of God Over Sin. Romans 1:16

It is 9 :00 PM. John is home alone with exception of his two sleeping children. His wife is enjoying a "Ladies Night Out" with a few of her friends from Church. He finds himself with nothing to do for the next hour or so. So he sits down at the computer to Check his email, He has received some spam he quickly deletes, there is a letter form his associate at work which he looks over briefly. After a few minutes he closes his email program and opens his browser to check his Face Book. He makes a few light hearted quips to few of his friends. Then he takes a moment to update his status then becomes board and goes over to the news.

All the while in the forefront of his mind, he is wrestling with his conscience, pretending not to to hear the voice of his flesh as it bullies him into compliance.

"Go to that "ONE" web page!" His flesh tells him. "No one will ever know."

At first he is able to ignore the desire. But as his flesh relentlessly assaults his conscience with one enabling excuse after another he begins to weaken..... His flesh is starting to make sense.

"It has been a while sense you looked at those types of sites. What can it hurt?"

"Just look for a second"

"Oh you want to, just admit it!" "Do it! You know how to cover your tracks" Its not that big of a deal.

" It's not your fault your wife can't keep up with you " Take care of it your self, She will be grateful that you aren't pressuring her.

On and on it goes relentlessly appealing to Johns carnal desires. After a while, seconds feel like hours. Gradually he finds himself giving over. Once his cravings rule his thoughts, it is all over, he abandons his conscience and indulges himself.

Defeated

John has been conquered by his own lust. With every click of the mouse he digs an ever deepening pit that has become his prison. The thing is, he professes to be a Christian. However, his hypocrisy has robbed him of any real assurance.

James 1:5 "Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death"

John is one of thousands of Christian men who live with this moral duplicity. It shames them. Because they are powerless over their own desires, they live each day defeated by their own lusts. They realize they are supposed to be victorious over their flesh yet defeat is all they experience. When confronted, they will vow to " Never do it again!" Yet in the course of time, their carnal desires will over power them, dragging them back to their dungeon, unable to resist because they are mastered by their flesh. They feel helpless, a slave to their sin.

I read an article recently at Crosswalk.com called "How Many Porn Addicts Are In Your Church" written by Mike Genung (*a) in it he sited some statistics that I found alarming. He states half of all Christian men have a problem with porn. In a Pastors.com survey, 54 percent of pastors said they viewed porn within the past year. In a 2003 Focus On The Family poll, 47 percent of respondents said porn is a problem in their home.

How can this be? According to Romans 6. The Christian life is death to the flesh. It is a resurrected or new life in Christ. How can a Christian's flesh have mastery over him. Either the Bible is wrong or there is something missing from the Christian's life.

Houston we have a problem!

As I have struggled with this problem in my own life, I can assure all who are reading this post that it can be overcome. The Bible is not wrong! You can have victory! You can be alone in the house with a computer and not be drowned by lustful thoughts. The battle can be won every time. The answer is not an exorcist or an accountability program that e-mail's your pastor. It is not found in a pep talk or confession, or even in scripture memorization. With the exception of the exorcist, these things help, but they do not deal with the root of the sin.

The problem is that John and all those like him are trying to serve God in their own strength. Apart from the power of the Holy Spirit. Just like the Jews in Paul's day wanted to come to God with out Jesus. To many people today attempt to serve God with out the Holy Spirit. The result is utter failure. I can not stress enough the importance of the Holy Spirit! With out Him, we have no hope of living a victorious Christian life. With out Him we have no power over sin. It is in and through the person of the Holy Spirit that we experience the "Power" and the "Presence" of God.

I think part of the difficulty is a lack of understanding as to who and what He does for us. Far to often He is minimized and rarely spoken of. With that in mind, allow me to point out that when we speak about the Holy Spirit, we must realize that we are talking about God himself and how he interacts and relates to His people. Not some weird obscure teaching, that can be accepted or dismissed off hand. It is from the Holy Spirit, that third person of the Godhead, that we experience a personal, intimate, and tangible relationship with God.

Galatians 5:16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

To many believers today do not know the Holy Spirit (God) on an a intimate and person level. To them he is somewhere out there. Some see Him as an "It" and think that people who speak in tongues are weirdos, fanatics who are over emotional and completely void of scriptural grounding. But instead of working through the abuses that take place, many pastors avoid the subject all together. Never taking the time to allow the Holy Spirit to Guide them into the truth. As a result we have believers who are powerless over sin.

This is a tragedy. In reality, He offers strength and supernatural counsel. Refuge and foresight. He is the builder of our faith he is our source of power to be victorious over sin. He is with us, walking along side, available 24 hours a day 356 days a year. Yet so many go through their life completely oblivious to His presence. They attempt to serve God in their own strength. In their zeal, they determine to live better. To die to self. They nail themselves to a cross and die daily but never experience the resurrection from the dead, that newness of life, Paul talks about in Romans 6:3-8

Romans 6:3-8 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

Scripture teaches us that when God's presence is in our life we will undoubtedly experience wondrous displays of power! That power is described by Paul in Romans 1:16 as the " Power of God to salvation"

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

Paul was specifically referring to the gospel of Christ for, through the understanding of the Gospels we realize that Christ died in our place, and restored our relationship to God. It is that relationship with God that gives us the power over sin.

The Bible teaches us that humanity is evil by nature. In and of ourselves we can never experience a personal, intimate and tangible relationship with God. He would never draw near to us because of our sin. It is because of Jesus that he abides with us. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news, the faith based reality, that because of Christ Jesus, God is with us. We are no longer separated by our sin.

It is because of God's presence, that we are now empowered to serve God through the new covenant of grace. Grace, I believe, is the presence of God in our life. It was God's unmerited favor that gave us the Holy Spirit, and it is through the Holy spirit that we over come sin! It is through the Holy Spirit that God is with us.

1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Over the next few writing I intend to explore the Spirit Filled life in more detail. To high light what I believe are the keys to living a victorious Christian life. Experts tell us that Pornography is a result of a lack of intimacy in the marriage. I believe this may be true, for I have found that sin in the believer, most often, is a lack of intimacy with God!

In Christ

ABR

*a -How Many Porn Addicts Are In Your Church

Written by Mike Genung

Crosswalk.com

http://www.crosswalk.com/1336107/