Addicted to sin, making the same mistakes over and over.

[JonathanC]

I feel like there are billions of people right now who need your prayers more I do. That's not to say I don't need them though.
If you pray for me, I ask that you remember someone else too.

I don't want to sin anymore. I've been in the habit so long and I've tried enough times to know it's unlikely I'll break it on my own. It's so important that I make a change. I'm lustful, slothful, wrathful, vain, gluttonous, and envious. I'm not a greedy person but I suspect it's at least partially because I'm poor.

I don't want to be lukewarm, and that's exactly what I am right now. My faith is strong but I'm garbage at keeping His commandments. Part of me is still worldly. The ironic thing is that I talk about the Lord Jesus Christ to many people. I'm a hypocrite.

I want to be a good man. I want to help people come to the Lord because I know that He's all we've got, and there are way too many people I don't want to miss if I manage to get to heaven.

Go on about your normal prayers. Pray for this world, we need that. But if you remember me sometime I would appreciate it. For those of you worried about the virus:

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
Psalms 91:3 KJV

I've went back and forth about this for a while. I don't like the way I sound in this post. You could argue that I sound fake.

I honestly just don't feel right asking for prayers to help with my own weakness looking at what so many people are dealing with right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading. God bless.

 

[Basil the Great]

Welcome to the forums, jonathanC. This subject has been discussed many times on CF and it seems that there is no solid consensus on the subject of habitual sin, especially if the sin is not a grave/mortal sin. If the sin is considered grave, then there probably is a pretty good agreement as to the need to forsake habitual sin. I like to tell the story about my great grandfather, who was very devout. He died when I was age 10, so I knew him somewhat. I remember asking him if God would forgive us if we kept sinning the same sin over and over and he said that God would not. However, decades later I told this story to his daughter, my great aunt, who was also very religious and she said that her father's response to me was not Scriptural. Still, I am sure that there are Scripture verses that could be used to support either view.

I will say a prayer for you tonight. Meanwhile, I recommend that you examine your life and look for ways that you can help others in need, be it assisting an elderly neighbor or volunteering at a local food pantry or homeless shelter (after the epidemic is over) or donating to a Christian charity. Such action on your part might well give you the extra incentive to break your habitual sin and even if you do not succeed at first, at least God will see that you are showing mercy to those in need.

 

[JonathanC]

Thank you

 

[Willing-heart]

Say this prayer with a sincere and broken spirit:

Lord Jesus, let every chain be broken from me, as I’m bound in Your grace, for Your yoke is easy Your burden is light. O Lord, may my heart always be set on your Kingdom. Break my heart for what breaks yours. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Amen & Amen.

Defeating Addiction

 

[Aussie Pete]

I feel like there are billions of people right now who need your prayers more I do. That's not to say I don't need them though.
If you pray for me, I ask that you remember someone else too.

I don't want to sin anymore. I've been in the habit so long and I've tried enough times to know it's unlikely I'll break it on my own. It's so important that I make a change. I'm lustful, slothful, wrathful, vain, gluttonous, and envious. I'm not a greedy person but I suspect it's at least partially because I'm poor.

I don't want to be lukewarm, and that's exactly what I am right now. My faith is strong but I'm garbage at keeping His commandments. Part of me is still worldly. The ironic thing is that I talk about the Lord Jesus Christ to many people. I'm a hypocrite.

I want to be a good man. I want to help people come to the Lord because I know that He's all we've got, and there are way too many people I don't want to miss if I manage to get to heaven.

Go on about your normal prayers. Pray for this world, we need that. But if you remember me sometime I would appreciate it. For those of you worried about the virus:

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
Psalms 91:3 KJV

I've went back and forth about this for a while. I don't like the way I sound in this post. You could argue that I sound fake.

I honestly just don't feel right asking for prayers to help with my own weakness looking at what so many people are dealing with right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading. God bless.

You have hit the point that most genuine Christians get to. Paul describes his crisis in Romans 7. It's a good point to reach but a lousy place to stay. God needs to come to the end of ourselves.

You give a hint when you say that you want to be a good man. I can assure you that will never happen. You are looking in the wrong direction. God's cure for your dilemma is simple and seems brutal. He wants you to die. He intends to kill you. And in fact, He's already done it.

God includes us, the sinner, in the death of Christ. It's a shame that this is not taught more. God knows that no matter how "good" we are we are not good enough. The Lord showed me through an apple. I bought it, took a bite and it was horrible. It looked fine on the outside. Inside, it was white but with flecks of brown all through. I could see no way of separating the rotten from the good so I binned the apple.

We are like the apple. There is some good in all people, but separating the rotten from the good is impossible. So God includes us in the death of Christ. Lord Jesus took us into the grave and left us there. He rose again and we rose with Him. This is what it means to be born again.

Being born again is not enough either. We get to know the demands of God because our live spirit man knows what sin is. Our conscience tells us when we go wrong. Our intuition tells us what we should be doing. The question is, how?

Most of us (my area of expertise) try and fail until we end up in despair. I won't embarrass myself by telling you how long it took me to give up. If we keep seeking God, He will show us that we need to nothing. We cannot change ourselves and we do not have to. God is not going to change us either. Instead, He substitutes Christ for us. We need do nothing. It's already done.

Why do we not have the experience? Mostly because it is hard to accept God's judgement. A bit like Abraham wanting God to bless Ishmael. So we try to change ourselves. Until we stop, God just lets us go on.

The answer is so simple that most people miss it. It is "Christ in you". God gives us Christ to everything that we should be but cannot be. But he won't accept second place. He's not going to help us. He wants to live in place of the old you.

Should you accept this truth, it is the greatest freedom imaginable. Many Christians are focused on sin. If only we could stop sinning. No. God's focus is on the positive, not the negative. Not only does Jesus not sin, He well pleases God all the time. Let Him live in your place. If you come to this place, all the pressure comes off and life becomes much easier. It's not that problems go away. It's rather that you have the Lord Jesus handling those problems instead of you. That is heaven on earth!

 

[SkyWriting]

I feel like there are billions of people right now who need your prayers more I do. That's not to say I don't need them though. If you pray for me, I ask that you remember someone else too. I don't want to sin anymore.

We all continue to sin till we die. The only difference is we allow Jesus to forgive us.
That's the only difference.

 

[Not me]

I feel like there are billions of people right now who need your prayers more I do. That's not to say I don't need them though.
If you pray for me, I ask that you remember someone else too.

I don't want to sin anymore. I've been in the habit so long and I've tried enough times to know it's unlikely I'll break it on my own. It's so important that I make a change. I'm lustful, slothful, wrathful, vain, gluttonous, and envious. I'm not a greedy person but I suspect it's at least partially because I'm poor.

I don't want to be lukewarm, and that's exactly what I am right now. My faith is strong but I'm garbage at keeping His commandments. Part of me is still worldly. The ironic thing is that I talk about the Lord Jesus Christ to many people. I'm a hypocrite.

I want to be a good man. I want to help people come to the Lord because I know that He's all we've got, and there are way too many people I don't want to miss if I manage to get to heaven.

Go on about your normal prayers. Pray for this world, we need that. But if you remember me sometime I would appreciate it. For those of you worried about the virus:

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
Psalms 91:3 KJV

I've went back and forth about this for a while. I don't like the way I sound in this post. You could argue that I sound fake.

I honestly just don't feel right asking for prayers to help with my own weakness looking at what so many people are dealing with right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading. God bless.

May God show you the way of walking in newness of life...Don’t stop asking, seeking, knocking for the answers your heart is seeking, are there for you, just don’t
shrink back, keep pressing in to Christ...For only blessings await you..Will be standing with you before His Throne...

A fellow believer, Not me

 

[Maria Billingsley]

I'm a hypocrite.

I was once a hypocrite myself. The Holy Spirit took a hold of the sins that caused me to have two masters. He made me make a choice. And with my willing heart to choose Him, He gave me the strength to keep my word. Calling oneself a hypocrite, is the gateway to freedom and the first step to true repentance.
Be blessed!

 

[St_Worm2]

Hello @JonathanC, first off, WELCOME TO CF

I left a ~very~ sinful life in my 20's when I finally became a Christian at age 30 (which was 33+ years ago now). Unfortunately, some of my former, sinful life came along with me for the ride (so to speak) in the form of mental baggage, so I ended up having both a horrible and painful "thought-life" as a result, which meant that I was constantly involved in either,

1. fighting off temptations/horrible, sinful thoughts by taking them "captive" .. 2 Corinthians 10:5 or
2. confessing and asking God to forgive me because I fell for the temptation and into sin instead
​

Getting more involved than I had been in the principle spiritual disciplines helped (Bible Study, Prayer, Fellowship, Witnessing), but it did not end the problem, far from it, that is until one of the teachers that I'd been listening to on Christian radio, Pastor Chuck Swindoll, gave me the answer. He told me that I needed to treasure or hide God's word in my heart by memorizing it, and that if I did, the garbage that was filling my mind at the time would be moved to the back of my mind, and then eventually, out of my mind altogether, as it would replace all of that stale, stinky garbage up there with something FAR better (the word of God ).

He also said that, along with emptying my mind of all the garbage, filling my mind with God's word would leave no room for it to return (and he was correct I am happy to report ). I am always able to commit more verses and passages from the Bible to memory, or to have lasting memories of other things in life which are true/honorable/praiseworthy, etc .. Philippians 4:8, but when the garbage tries to find its way back into my mind, it can't

I use the Navigator's Topical Memory System to memorize Scripture, first of all, because the Navigators have been using it to prepare their overseas missionaries for the mission field for nearly 100 years now (so it is a proven system), and also because their system had already assembled an extremely useful collection of verses and passages to help us live the Christian life.

BTW, when I began using the Topical Memory System 30 years ago, we used flash cards in packs to help us with our memory work, but they finally came out with both Apple and Android apps to replace them, which I believe is the better way to go now (though I must admit that all of my beaten up flash cards and verse packs are still one of my MOST highly prized possessions .. I never used to go anywhere without them).

So consider what Pastor Swindoll said to me, because I believe that the same thing that worked for me could work for you too I should also say that memory work is just that, "work", but I promise you that the benefits and blessings that it will produce in your life will far outweigh any time and effort that it requires of you

Also, sinning becomes a much harder thing to do, because every time that you are tempted to sin, the Holy Spirit will bring 2-3 perfectly memorized verses or passages to the very forefront of your mind to remind you why you shouldn't

Finally, if you decide that you'd like to memorize Scripture and you'd also like some help getting started, just PM me as I would be happy to help.

God bless you! (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)

--David
p.s. - here are some verses and passages that I hope will encourage you to memorize God's word, most of which you will, in fact, end up memorizing if you go that route .. Deuteronomy 11:18-21; Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:1-3, 119:105; John 17:17; Romans 12:2; 2 Timothy 2:15, 3:16-17.

Psalm 119:9, 11
How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy word. Thy word I have 'treasured/hidden' in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee.
.​

 

[JonathanC]

Thank you all very much

 

[St_Worm2]

Hello again @JonathanC, I had one last thought that I'd like to share with you.

Rarely does the Bible come right out and tell us what the will of God is. Fortunately, it does so for certain subjects, and this is one of them. The Bible says (specifically), "~This is the will of God~, your sanctification........".. 1 Thess 4:3.

It also tells us that the very One who saved us in the first place will see to our ongoing sanctification, our growth in Christlikeness throughout this life .. Philippians 1:6, 2:13, and that, unlike justification, He has enabled us to come alongside of Him in this process such that we press forward together towards achieving this lofty goal. We do so by renewing our minds daily .. Romans 12:2, and by continuing to "work out" (or express in action .. Packer, J.I.) the salvation that God has already worked into us (to the degree we are able to anyway) .. Philippians 2:12-13.

Finally, the principle means that God uses to sanctify us and renew our minds has already been mentioned (at some length), but I will do so again .. e.g. John 17:17 (so, the better that we know and the more deeply that we understand the truth/His word, the more effective His sanctifying work will be in us ).

I was hopeful, but did not really believe Pastor Swindoll (that memorizing a few verses and passages would solve the HORRIBLE problem that I had with sinful thoughts/sin), but what he promised us would happen, did happen, I am (again) pleased to report

God bless you! (Numbers 6:24-26)

--David

 

[musicalpilgrim]

I pray for you that as you read your Bible, learn the memory verses and pray, that God will draw you closer to himself.
God bless

 

[LoricaLady]

Your prayer is very valid and just as valuable as that of others on this Forum. If you are very healthy a 24 hour water-only fast once a week, with prayer, can render amazing result spiritually over time.
If you are not healthy, it could be harmful to your adrenals.

I pray you will be led to a very close walk with the Lord.