The Fight with Sin

I recently had a friend who asked me to articulate what it meant to fight sin and to have victory over it. It propelled me to study and to come to find some great resources in the Word and in John Macarthur which I would love to share hoping you too would be encouraged.

First of all I want to remind you (IF YOU ARE A BELIEVER) of who YOU are in Christ Jesus. He has rescued you from the dominion of darkness (Col 1:13), freed you from the bondage of sin (Isaiah 14:3) and He has made you a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). With all that said you are deeply loved by a Savior who hung on a cross 2000 years ago and bore the wrath of a Holy and just God for YOU, for the sins past, present and future and why? Because He loved YOU! How incredible the Father's love is for us, that nothing can separate us from it!! (Romans 8:34-39)

So as believers because we love and fear a holy God we want to obey Him. The exciting reality is that we can! We can obey Him, we can say no to our flesh and the desires that wage war within our spirits/souls because He has freed us from that bondage to sin. Look at Titus 2:11-13 "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. 12It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ". How amazing is that reality, we are overcomers in Christ Jesus because He died to sin for us! What is another amazing Truth and promise is that He has given us ALL the resources we need for life and Godliness (2 Peter 1:3). Knowing that we have everything we need leaves us with no excuse. We no longer sin because we are slaves but rather because we love ourselves more than we love and fear the God who crucified His Son for that pleasure that we must have. So how do we fight sin then? Paul said that He beat His body and strove to make it his slave. So here are some practical steps (stolen from Jmac):

"1. Recognize the sinfulness of your flesh- Any kind of spiritual victory begins by identifying the enemy. Don’t be deceived about how good you are. Believe me, your sin is there, and it is wretched and it spurts forth between the cracks of your supposed righteousness. It comes out in anger and bitter words, unkind thoughts, criticisms, self-conceit, lack of understanding, impatience, weak prayers, immoral thoughts, and even overt sins. You need to know your weaknesses.

2. Fix Your Heart on God- Second step. In order to gain this victory, its triumph, and to see the power of the Spirit of God begin to give you the power over the unredeemed flesh that you desire, that God desires, you must have a heart fixed on God. A heart fixed on God. The Psalmist said in Psalm 57:7, "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed." What do I mean by that? Undivided devotion to God! That's that wholeness in spiritual life where I am given wholly to God. What do I mean by that? What I am really saying in this context is, you can't have sin in one area. You can't just sort of clean up a lot of it but leave it in one area. You can't starve it out and kill it in one spot and feed it so it lives in another spot. If it lives anywhere it will crawl all over everywhere. It is the most noxious, fastest growing weed in existence. It will not confine itself to one flower bed, it'll be everywhere. The Psalmist said in Psalm 119, verse 6, "Then shall I not be ashamed." When? When will you not be ashamed? "When I have respect unto all thy commandments." My life isn't going to be right, my life isn't going to be without shame until I give proper respect to every command of God. And that is to deal with every issue of sin in my life. The only unashamed life is the life of one who is totally fixed on God; everything has been dealt with.

3. Meditate on the Word- The filling of the Spirit is equated in Colossians 3, to letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. When the Word controls you, when it controls your thinking, when it is there as the Psalmist said, "To meditate on day and night," when it is there hidden that "I might not sin against God," then you have a control factor in your life. The way to kill sin in your life is to feed it Scripture. It's a poison. It'll poison sin. Just feed a sinful life Scripture--it will poison it! Whatever really controls your mind, controls your behavior; so you learn to close out the garbage and you feed the sin, the remaining sin, in your life a steady diet of God's glorious truth and it poisons sin. And so you must give yourself to the Word. You must saturate yourself in the Word. You must hear the Word preached and taught. You must learn it yourself and you must meditate on it day and night.

4. Commune with God in prayer- True prayer gives the heart a sense of its own vile character and renews the hatred of sin. True prayer does that. John Owens said, "He who pleads with God for the remission of sin also pleads with his own heart to detest it." Somewhere along the line, in your own prayer life you need to get honest. You need to get honest. And you need to begin to say to God, "I want you to reveal my sin, I want you to stir it up in me. I want you to show it to me. I want you to blow away the dust that is covering it. I want you to peel off the things that have been hiding it away in my life, so that it becomes manifest and visible to me. I want to see the reality of my sin. I want you to show it to me just the way it is." That's part of your communion with God.

When you pray to God--that is an honest confession. You can say you confess your sins, but until you pray, "God show me all the sins of my life, reveal all of them, uncover every little corner of my life. Bring it up and may it become as detestable to me as it is to you, and may you give me the strength to see it go away." Those are the kind of prayers that are the true prayers of repentance. I have always believed that when you really confess your sins there is a little P.S. that you add to the end of it, when you say, "Lord please forgive me for that sin," and you always add, if your confession is true, "and Lord may I never do that again." That's my heart's cry. And then prayer exposes secret sins. Prayer weakens prevailing sins. Prayer finds strength in fellowship with the Holy God to kill sin in our lives.

What must I do if I am to know victory over sin? First, I have to recognize the sin in my life. Don't kid yourself, don't gloss over yourself, don't underestimate your wretched condition as Paul didn't in Romans, chapter 7. And then fix your gaze wholly on God and become totally devoted to Him, so that everything in life, center and circumference, is Him. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 16, "I have set the Lord always before me," and that is the only way to live. And then it is also equally essential that you cultivate a knowledge and understanding, and a deep comprehension and application of Biblical truth, and that you spend time in honest prayer before God, bringing the truth to life in His presence. And in those kinds of simple spiritual exercises comes the death of sin. Then there is a fifth and last in this little pattern of victory.

5. Cultivate Obedience- ow we go out of that private place, where you looked for your sin and where you fixed you gaze on God. And where you meditated on the Word, and where you communed with God in prayer, and we move into the public place and now the pattern of your life is set on a course of obedience. Paul said, "I haven't attained," I love this, "but," he said, "I press towards the mark." I haven't reached the goal but I am on the path. What path was he on? The path of obedience. Peter said, "Our lives should be characterized," 1 Peter 1:22, "by obedience to the truth." And we walk a path of obedience. If you want to engage yourself with a real battle with sin, just set your course, day-by-day, moment-by-moment, one step at a time, on a path of obedience. At first it seems hard, at first the progress seems slow, but you stay with it and eventually you become habitually obedient. Habitually obedient. It becomes a habit! You stay on the path that God has laid out in His Word. That path will lead you to grow in grace, to perfect holiness, to renew the inward man day-by-day, and you'll train yourself towards godliness.

Now, it would be fair, I think, to ask a final question, and that is, "How am I doing on this?" How can I do a little inventory and say to myself, "Soul, Soul, how are you doing? How's this working out? Are you doing these things?" Just ask yourself some simple questions.

A. How's my zeal for God?

Is my heart cold towards God? Has sin made me indifferent to times of communion with Him? Do I have little or no interest in His presence? In the glory of His name? Do I love His Word? Do I love His law? Can I understand what the Psalmist meant in Psalm 119:136, when he said, "Rivers of water run down my eyes, because they keep not thy law." Do I have such a love for God's law that I am devastated when His law is disregarded? Do I earnestly contend for the faith? Do I live to uphold truth? To live it? To proclaim it? What level is my zeal at?

B. Do I love the Word?

Do I find myself drawn to the Word? Almost pinned to it by some divine wrestler who has me on the canvas and I can't get up until its truths have become my own convictions. Do I find myself indulging in the deep things of the Word? Ask myself this, "Self, do you love the time of prayer? Do you love the place of confession? Do you eagerly rush into the place where you can confess your sin and ask God to do the self-examining process by the light of the Holy Spirit, so that every dirty thing can be brought to light. Do you seek that? Do you delight in worship? Is it your great longing to be here with God's redeemed people? Is it precious to you to spend the Lord's Day in the church? Is it your soul's highest delight to sing His praise and know Him better, that you might offer Him honor?" Or do you say with the Jews of Malachi's day, "What a weariness worship is!"

Ask yourself this, "Are you sensitive to sin in the church? Are you sensitive to sin in the world? Does it tear your heart up when you see sin around you any where? In your own life?"

You see those are just the basic principles I gave you, just flipped around and turned into self-examining questions. Spiritual victory is there if you recognize that you are not under any obligation to sin. If you recognize that the Spirit of God has already bent you towards life, and so He's already killing sin in your life, and the power to kill all of it is there. Then all you need to do is tap into the means, and I gave you simple principles by which you can begin to do that in your life, and a little test by which you can examine where you are.


I don't know about you but I want to have a life of virtue. I want to have a life of joy. I want to have a life of peace, and I want to have a life of usefulness to God, and this is the path to that life. And may God give you the strength to walk it; and may through you walking it faithfully, God bring glory to His own name. That's the purpose of everything."

Hope this all helps, JMAC had some great tips :). You can gain victory and remember that you are NEVER outside of God's grace no matter how great your obedience was today and how terrible tomorrow, rejoice in that and strive to live a life that pleases Him.

Why Trust Him?

I don't even know how many times I have written about trust but I find myself yet again being reminded of my utter dependence on God and the wholehearted trust He commands me to possess. Trusting someone who is PERFECTLY FAITHFUL and immutable should be the easiest thing in the world, but from time to time it becomes a refining process as God calls me to step in faith and to keep my eyes fixed on Him as I step into the unknown; each time He has ever led me in these ways I have seen His providential hand grow and strengthen me and yet I battle my flesh in this area. If we are to place our trust in God alone (John 14:1), to trust Him at ALL times (Isaiah 26:4), to NEVER trust in ourselves (Proverbs 3:5-6), and to trust even when we are afraid (Psalm 56:3), what are the results? What happens when the Spirit enables us to exhibit trust in the way in which God is most glorified?

- PROTECTION
"But let all who take refuge in you be glad;
let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over them,
that those who love your name may rejoice in you." -Psalm 5:11

""Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him." -Proverbs 30:5

"How priceless is your unfailing love!
Both high and low among men
find refuge in the shadow of your wings." -Psalm 36:7

-GLADNESS
" Let the righteous rejoice in the LORD
and take refuge in him;
let all the upright in heart praise him!" -Psalm 64:10

-PEACE
"You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you." -Isaiah 26:3

-BLESSING
" O LORD Almighty,
blessed is the man who trusts in you." -Psalm 84:12

"But blessed is the man who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in him." -Jeremiah 17:7

-CONFIDENCE
"He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord." -Psalm 112:7

Isn't it interesting that the very reasons we are resisting trusting God are because we want the very things He promises us in that trust? We want protection, we want joy/gladness, we want peace, we want blessing, we want confidence! Amazing how God works huh?! The precious promises of His Word reveal more and more how much He is intimately in love with us His kids and how He SO desires to sanctify us into Christ likeness and use us for His glory, and in the midst of it all He has our good at heart! What an incredible Father! We have NO REASON to ever not trust, may these Truths compel us to trust with all that is within us!

Unanswered Prayers

I don't know how many times I have prayed for something and have seemed to think they were "unanswered". Although my prayer may have been for God's will or His direction, when the outcome was different than what "I" had expected I was quick to think that God had not answered my prayer. What God has taught me so much about over the past year and a half is that He ALWAYS answers our prayers, the thing is the way in which He answers is not always the way in which we expect. I may think that I know what is the right or best outcome of a situation but do I really? Do I know better than the God of the universe? Haaa...it is almost comical just to think about. Of course I don't! He knows better, He knows BEST. He is working His plan out in our lives, HIS plan, not ours. As Romans 8:28 says He is working ALL things together for the good of those who love Him.

The thing that I guess I often forget is that through all the ways in which He leads, guides, directs, answers prayers etc. is the way in which He sanctifies me. You see God is in the process of molding His kids more and more into the image of His Son and to conform us into that, if that is the goal, if the goal of our lives here on earth is to sanctify us and prepare us for heaven then we shouldn't be surprised when we are pruned and refined, even though there is pain that may come along with that. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 we read, "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." This process should be utter joy for us believers because we can TRUST, choose to believe the Truth that He is making us like Jesus to bring glory to His name!

So the next time I think that a prayer went "unanswered" from my finite perspective I must remember there is no such thing!