Sue, it looks as if your post is blessing many. How wonderful.
As I was addicted since age 12, and I am talking life controlling lust, perhaps my experience will encourage others.
Many have cried out to God to set them free from this evil and very provacative sin, and yet it seems their cries fall on deaf ears. We wonder, "Does God not care?" I know He CAN do this. Why am I still a slave to my lust?"
What I discovered is that there were two reasons why my own prayers went seemingly unanswered.
1) I saw my problem as a sin- lust and the inappropriate contentography that fed it. God saw my problem as my old nature, all of it. I was crying to defeat a sin when my very nature WAS sin. Do you see the dilemma? My problem, which I did not see at the time, was my flesh itself needed to die, Dying to one sin accomplished little if anything if I remained in the old man. I was trying to die to a specific thing. God wanted me to die to sin- period.
Our old nature must be put off, and we must clothe ourselves with a new nature,a nature that not only wants to do God's will, but is also empowered to follow through in doing it. This is the real wonder of our being born again. Our old nature, we are told, died with Christ when He died. Because of that, we are now dead to sin, and Paul tells us that we are no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit if so be that the spirit of God dwells in us.
Cut the head off the serpent, the acts of the serpant disappear. We are still wrestling the body...and losing.
This brings us to the second truth.
2) This putting off the old man and putting on the new, this truth that old things have passed away and all things have become new confuses us to no end, becasue we do not "feel" new. The fact is, we very much feel the same. If all these things are true, we ask ourself "Why am I not then set free? Why does lust still rage in my heart?"
There is a clear reason.
"For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it."
Hebrews 4:2
Lest we forget, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT seen. Once we are convinced of these amazing truths of God. and as our eyes fall on the promise of God that sin shall not have dominion over us, our faith may still be but a seed, dormant, lifeless. Butmake no mistake, it is a seed planted by God, and has the supernatural life of God within it. As Jesus said, it's capailities are that it can sprout and grow into a great tree. That is the power of that dry dormant faith within us. Now, it needs to be planted.
You see, we do not need for God to "do" something. He already has! Our failure is in not launching out to believe His amazing promises.
So what do we do? I can only say what God led me to do. He brought me to Romans 6 and I read where Paul instructs us to reckon ourself dead to sin and alive unto God. He then asked me if I had ever obeyed this verse. I was flabbergasted. I had not. I saw immediately what i needed to do. I needed to hold up my shield of faith! But first I must plant the seed and confess his promise is mine.
I took a deep breath and spoke. Remember faith comes by hearing, and I was desperate to hear it, and it needed to come from MY mouth. I spoke the words aloud that I reckoned myself dead to sin, dead to lust, dead to the old nature that cannot obey. I made sure my loving Father, who had been so patient and longsuffering with me for 36 years of failure, I made sure He heard me. I also made sure satan heard me, loud and clear. And as I spoke, that little dry seed of faith, our gift from God, began to come alive and strength with it. And satan began to sweat.
We are told in Revelation 12 that the saints overcame the devil by "the blood ofthe lamb AND the word of THEIR testimony." Do we see? Do we see where we have been misled? We are like the blind man waiting for years....decades...by the pool of Siloam for the angel to stir the water to heal our blindness, and all the while, the very son of God is within us, and has pronounced us whole, if we will but believe!
Our shield of faith MUST be raised if we ever are to have victory over the sins that so easily beset. And our shield is our weak trust in His string promises, that they are ours...NOW. We are not to walk by what we see, or what we feel, but by trust in a God who cannot lie.
We have now fully entered into the good fight of faith and God now wants our faith to not stay a small seed, or even an nice little plant. He wants a tree.
I hope this helps someone out there. God is not looking for "strong" saints, nor diligent ones. He is looking for the weak ones who know their weakness, and are hungry to be different, to be free indeed. Of such is the kingdom of God.
Blessings,
Bruce
