If I want to have a deep, strong, thriving spiritual life, I need to take the advice of John Owen:
The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh. (Temptation and Sin, pg. 9)
If we don’t vigorously fight against our sin, we won’t have a strong spiritual life. There is no deep, joyful, gladness in God apart from the hard work of putting sin to death. Sin is like sickness. The more it hangs around, the worse our spiritual life becomes. The more we kill it by the power of the spirit, the more we grow in spiritual health.
Let’s fight our sin. For our joy.
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Thank you, for this, Stephen! You flipped the switch that crystallized my thoughts so I have a meaningful lesson to share with our church this sunday!
Keep up the fight and stop being comfortable in the chains of sin!
I'm so glad that you found it helpful Ben.
Amen!!!
This whole concept of "putting to death the misdeeds of the body" I see as the greatest struggle among believers, and unfortunately, many churches give little time to instruction and encouragement to boldly fight this battle! For a poem on this topic check out the following link: http://biblepoetry.wordpress.com/the-death-of-%E2...
Thanks JD
Your poem sparked the memory of a poem I recently wrote that I mildly based off of Romans 8:13. Here is the link to it:http://arguingwithangels.blogspot.com/2010/04/rom...
Amen, amen, amen!
I would commend Owen's "The Mortification of Sin" (the Puritan Paperback version is an excellent modern English rendering). If you haven't read that work already, well let me just say that the quote you referenced is expounded upon and explored soooooo deeply by Owen in "The Mortification of Sin".
Thanks for the post Stephen.
Fight for a greater joy.