How would you counsel someone if they came to you and they say...
"I'm falling into this sin of looking at pornography on the Internet."
How would you help them to discern whether they're a lost and their a slave of sin or
whether they're a true Christian who is falling into sin,
they're saved, but their just struggling with this sin.
It's a besetting sin.
This is even maybe a young person whose had a recent profession in the Lord.
and your trying to help them discern,whether they are saved or lost.
Your question I think is definitive and that is,
are they living in it or have they fallen into it?
Ya, a Christian falls into sin, but he does not live in it.
In the case of a new convert, you know, you've got to cut some more slack admittedly.
But the big question is, is he fighting it, is he hating it is he concerned about it?
If that's the case, he's a new Christian,
he sees it is sin, he realizes he's doing that, hes open and wants to be free of it.
You know, then you remind him of the glorious gospel, what he has in Christ,
and that's the burden of Romans 6, how are we who are dead to sin continue in it any longer?
He's reminding that it's an impossibility, if you're born-again, you've got a new nature,
your no longer in Adam, your in Christ, your old sinful self is gone, you're a new man in Christ.
And now Romans 6, it exhorts us to be who you are.
It exhorts us, knowing these things, and we lay aside the old man and put on the new man.
Just realize that to entertain sin is hypocritical, it doesn't fit us, it doesn't work for us
any more, it's never going to satisfy.
Acknowledging those things in Romans Chapter 6, becoming who we are.
Another thing it is, in Romans chapter 8, if you through the Spirit put to death the
deeds of the flesh you will live,
if you through the Spirit, so you know, we can't do it on our own.
Just plow yourself into God, be filled with the Spirit,
you know when the tide is high, don't get caught on the rocks.
so be filled with the Spirit, walk with God
Saturate yourself with the Lord, and just throw yourself into his work and business,
advancing His kingdom.
These things then will indirectly fall off.
A lot of the way of victory over sin is indirect, it's indirect, you don't address it directly so much
but you just are taken up with the things of God and His glory.
If you through the Spirit do mortify.
Sometimes it does address us that way, Peter says "Lay it aside, put it off."
These are new testament terms, so you do have to get ruff.
Get ugly, get mean, get desperate.
A lot of times I think the failure to get victory over sin is a lack of desperation, a lack of sincerity.
I mean, here's my father, he was not regenerate, he was not a Christian at all, never claimed to be
Over the years he'd try to quit the cigarettes, and you know he'd quit them for awhile, and
then he'd smoke them again.
Finally when he was 70, he saw his grandson, my son, sitting at the kitchen table, picking
up a tooth pick, imitating his grandfather smoking a cigarette.
When my grandfather saw that, he thought to himself
"I'm not going to be that kind of example to my grandson."
I don't want to see him smoke,
And just like that, my dad quit smoking, and he was not even born-again.
It's just kinda pitiful for somebody who claims to be a Christian to keep on dabbling like that
He's just not desperate enough.