Be careful what you fill yourself with for it may become your undoing. The sin we all wrestle with is idolatry stemming from pride. The good news of the gospel is that we are nothing apart from Christ. On our own we are filthy, and if left to our own thoughts and ways we will be lead to destruction.
James reminds Christians in his epistle to remember the source of our temptation,
“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.”
Christians would do well to note that temptation occurs when we are “carried away by our own lusts.” Satan’s has no power, influence, or authority in the life of a believer. Sin is a conscience choice for a follower of Christ. We cannot continue to live in open unrepentant sin and claim Christ. When we sin we make the choice freely to do so. When we face the effects of that sin we do so as a direct result of our failings. Therefore we should not Blame God for the sorrow in our own life. Likewise we should not give Satan credit for creating the chaos in our life. We have created our own mess. Satan cannot oppress or possess a child of God by his own authority. Sin is a conscience choice.
God knows the wickedness of our hearts and sees us from the inside out, yet he loves us anyway. He loves us enough to give us the freewill to choose to follow him or to walk away, to honor him or dishonor him. No better example of this can be found biblically than God’s encounter with Cain in Genesis 4.
“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it’.”
We must recognize our sinful tendencies and learn to master sin. For sin is crouching at the door of our hearts and family, our church, community and nation. If we choose to allow sin to have a foothold it will devour us. Peter warns Christians to “be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Don’t be fooled sin is destructive, and given the opportunity it will destroy you and no sin can go undiscovered.
We’ve all heard stories of lion tamers ferociously attacked by the lions they worked with. Almost every time one of these mentally challenged lion tamers (which is an oxymoron statement in and of itself) are attacked they seem to always respond “I don’t know why he did that.” I can tell you it’s because he is a lion. A lion is a lion, and will always be a lion. You can’t tame a lion you have to kill it. You can’t teach a lion, who sole purpose is to kill and devour other living things to be a house cat! The only reason the Lion wouldn't attack it’s trainer is because it just ate.
Likewise you can’t tame sin. Sin must die, and through the power of the Holy Spirit we must kill it. If you wrestle with sin something is going to die the only question is who will act first. In Acts 12 King Herod was playing around with Sin and it was his undoing. God will not be mocked nor share his glory with another. Herod was a prideful arrogant, angry man. Herod’s pride produced an angry heart, which lead to setting himself up as God. Herod worshiped himself and gladly accepted the praise of the Jewish people, which ultimately lead to his destruction.
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