This is your brain on sin.
As Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34; New King James Version). The Apostle Paul wrote, “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Romans 6:16).
Think about this. Remember this as you face the choices that are coming up in your life: Sin hooks you. “The key is to never let it begin,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “Once we are hooked, it is almost impossible to repent without mind-paralyzing trials. That is how hard a sinning mind becomes. Sin penetrates our very being and becomes a real part of our lives. This should cause men to acutely fear sinning. But it rarely works that way. Jeremiah shows that even when some people know where sin leads, they still continue sinning” (ibid; emphasis added).
If you ask just about any adult in God’s Church about this, you will hear the same thing. Just about everyone has regrets in their lives—sins we wish we had never committed, problems we never would have had if we never made that first wrong choice, scorched parts of our minds that happened because we made a sinful decision.
Satan and the peers, musicians and celebrities he inspires do a terrific job of making sin attractive. But that brightly burning feeling is charring your mind. “They promise … freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:19; Revised Standard Version).
The less experience you have with sin, the cleaner your mind is. You don’t have those black marks and scars. You are free—truly free!—from the life-searing problems of slavery to sin.
That is a far greater blessing than you can realize. Accept it in faith—before someone offers you that first high. Trust God. When you are faced with a choice to sin, remember: “The key is to never let it begin.” Put away that lighter. Don’t even start.
No comments:
Post a Comment