“Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;” (Heb. 11:25)
We do not always count everything in our past as dung, do we?
Those past accomplishments, accolades and praise of the world are in many cases the least of our concerns, pride, when the physical ability to accomplish those things ceases, but can easily be transferred in our minds to jealousy and envy, and those will lead to hate if we are not cautious.
But there are other traits of our flesh, our old nature that can vex us just as much, and what we once had can become a snare unto us, whether finished by the deeds of the flesh, or rolled around in our minds, they will hold us in bondage.
“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1st John 2:16)
One does not envision the mind that wanders in that verse very often, do they? Instead, they see the action of sin.
Two verses for you then.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)
And
“But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matt. 5:28)
We could add this one as well.
“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” (Romans 1:21)
We contemplate sin before we act upon it my friends, yet many who claim to serve Christ will believe in that heart of theirs that the action of sin is worse than the thought of it, instead of this truth, if the thought of sin is acted upon, it is sin piled upon sin.
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24)
If David would have glanced once, and then turned away, Uriah may have come home from the battle.
Now then we must contemplate this verse in context.
“Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” (James 1:15)
Can this verse only come to fruition if the pleasure of that season of sin never becomes an action of the flesh? Can a person long for something in their heart, and that nearly constantly, and it not be considered conceived sin? How long does the imagination need to remain in those thoughts of sin before the Almighty gives them over to a reprobate mind?
Everyone who has been born-again, whose heart of hearts is where the Holy Spirit resides, whose desire it is to be a profitable servant, to humbly submit in love to the will of the Living God fights the battle of the flesh every day, those thoughts that it loves that we detest. Anyone who says otherwise is in danger of denying the truth of 1st John 1:8.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
This is not Satan attacking you, you must realize this truth, it is you, or perhaps better said, it is the part of you that refuses to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that part that does not want to submit to His will, that wants complete and total freedom from the Almighty’s commandments.
“But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1st Cor. 9:27)
But not without fierce battles in the mind.
You must see the truth of the opening verse to this short letter to you today, those pleasures of sin will not last, they are for a season only, and you know full well that even if they are only constructs of our imagination and never become actions followed by our flesh, if they are continued in and by our own free will and design, they can become more than a stumbling block. They will become sin.
The consequences of an imagination not blocked when they are recognized as a path to sin, even if only in the mind, are the same as if the action followed the thoughts.
Sin is sin.
If you understand this letter, you understand the battle, and have entered into it many times. Remember this verse in the midst of those thoughts.
“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)
