Prayer: Father, I need Your help this morning. It feels like evil is surrounding me and trying to intimidate me by its presence. I pray for protection and peace. Amen.
Reading: Proverbs 17 key: 19
19 He who loves sin loves strife.
One who builds a high gate invites destruction.
Attention: We are a hedonistic society, Christian community included. I can remember hearing a pastor in the pulpit exclaim, “Hedonism is good!” Really? We love our indulgences. In my region for the past 25 years, designer coffee has been the religion of choice. I have noticed an increase of luxury cars in my community. I guess I can only ask, what is your secret indulgence? Does the enemy tell you, “You deserve it”? Do you tell yourself. “You deserve it”?
We had a war which was over oil years ago. I recall at that time thinking, there may come a day when we could be invaded, not for oil and precious metals, but for water and food. What is it going to be like when we flaunt our indulgences in the face of those who are starving? Will they silently sit, watch, and perish?
Solomon was one of the most indulgent men who ever lived. So, it is interesting to me that he makes this statement about loving sin. Here is his statement in Ecclesiastes 2: 10-11 “I denied myself nothing that my eyes desired; I withheld from my heart no enjoyment. My heart took delight from all my toil— this was my reward for all my labor.
Yet when I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended to accomplish it, behold, it all was futile and chasing after the wind. There was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
Here is Paul’s struggle with sin. “So I find the principle—that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
For I delight in the Torah of God with respect to the inner man,
but I see a different law in my body parts, battling against the law of my mind and bringing me into bondage under the law of sin which is in my body parts.
Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God—it is through Messiah Yeshua our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself serve the Torah of God; but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25)
What a contrast between the two men. Whose life would you like to model your life after? When was the last time we addressed our love of sin? Have you ever addressed your love of sin?
Action: I acknowledge my love of sin. (Name the sin you will cease to embrace starting today) Holy Spirit, with Your help I will eliminate this sin, today.
Yield: Begins with the desire to be conformed to Christ’s image.
Engage: I engage with the Holy Spirit in transforming my life when I allow Him to expose and reveal my sin to me.
Relationship: I Choose Life with the Spirit!
Prayer: Father, help me to not continue in my ways and habits which control me. I want to please You. I want to be obedient to You. Praise You! Amen.
Memory Verse: 1 Corinthians 6:12
12 “Everything is permitted for me”—but not everything is helpful. “Everything is permitted for me”—but I will not be controlled by anything
Music Video: https://youtu.be/dwLFp1weuA8
Remember, “Abide in Yeshua, today!”