Mount of Blessings p. 141 "The Christian life is a battle and a march. But the victory to be gained is not won by human power. The field of conflict is the domain of the heart. The battle which we have to fight--the greatest battle that was ever fought by man--is the surrender of self to the will of God, the yielding of the heart to the sovereignty of love. The old nature born of blood and of the will of the flesh, cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. The hereditary tendencies, the former habits, must be given up.
He who determines to enter the spiritual kingdom will find that all the powers and passions of an unregenerate nature, backed by the forces of the kingdom of darkness, are arrayed against him. Selfishness and pride will make a stand against anything that would show them to be sinful. We cannot of ourselves, conquer the evil desires and habits that strive for the mastery. We cannot overcome the mighty foe who holds us in his thrall. God alone can give us the victory. He desires us to have the mastery over ourselves, our own will and ways. But He cannot work in us without our consent and cooperation. The divine Spirit works through the faculties and powers given to man. Our energies are required to cooperate with God.
The victory is not won without much earnest prayer; without the humbling of self at every step. Our will is not to be forced into cooperation with divine agencies, but it must be voluntarily submitted. Were it possible to force upon you with a hundredfold greater intensity the influence of the Spirit of God, it would not make you a Christian, a fit subject for Heaven. The stronghold of Satan would not be broken. The will must be placed on the side of God's will. You are not able, of yourself to bring your purposes and desires and inclinations into submission to the will of God' but if you are 'willing to be made willing,' God will accomplish the work for you, even casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against th kowledge of God, and bringing into captvity every thought to the obedience of Christ.' 2 Corinthians 10:5. Then your will 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God Which worketh in you both to will and to o of His good pleasure. Philippians 2:12,13.
God's nature dwelling in you will keep you from having any desire to tell that lie. Does that mean Satan won't tempt? Absolutely not! He will tempt, and will tempt as much as he can, just as he continually tempted Christ--so much in fact that it could be said that Christ was "in all points tempted like as we are, "fortunately, "yet without sin" Hebrews 4:15.
Perhaps you ask, "When does temptation become sin? Is it when we succumb to the evil suggestion and act on it? No! Are you shocked by my answer? Well, when do we sin? When we let our minds dwell upon the suggestion. Let me put it another way: Temptation becomes sin when we contemplate it! Proverbs 23:7 says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is be." Where, then, is the sin? In the heart! To eradicate the act, sin must first be eradicated from the heart. If my heart is clinging to a sin, but I find a way to resist the temptation, I'm only being hypocritical. Why? I'm doing something that I'm not. Someone said, "Restrained badness is the worst kind of goodness." Did you know that unrestrained badness is the kind of goodness the world expects? The world says, "Don't do this or that where people can see you." Apparently sin is okay if no one else knows about it. Was restrained badness the kind of goodness Jesus was referring to when He said, "Keep My commandments"? I don't think so. Jesus said, "If you keep My commandments, you shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love" John 15;10.
Do you see why I love this truth? All I have to do is surrender my life to God and stay surrendered!
The work that I do is staying surrendered, sometimes the old nature shows up and we slip up and fall.
What do we do then? We get up confess our fall, whatever it was and sincerely ask God to forgive us.
Next time that sin crops up, we may resist it or fall again, but we are always forgiven if we are sincere about our repentance. Eventually we won't commit that sin again. God may take it away immediately as He sometimes does and other times He lets us fall so we can see how weak we are without Him. It is in the daily abiding that we have the victory. Grandma Joan
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