Be Ruthless with Sin

1/28/1990

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This isn’t a profound thing but it’s part of what’s been said so far: we sell our souls a thimbleful at a time.

When you allow your eyes to wander and you’re not militantly against that; if you don’t cut it off, declare it as sin and instantly deal with it as such, as sin, clear-cut, absolute sin—it’s wrong, it’s an offense to God—and ask for forgiveness, if you let it drift and acknowledge, “Well, that wasn’t very good, was it?” and then go on to the next thing, you’ve sold a little bit of your soul to the flesh and to satan. When you allow something in your mind—discouragement or bitterness towards someone—and you say in your mind, “You know I really shouldn’t be that way,” but then you go on—you don’t nail it, you don’t drive it home and oust it out, and pull it out by its hair, or by its ear, out of your face, out of your head, out of your heart, if you refuse to deal with it militantly, you’ve sold another thimbleful of your soul.

The big things don’t happen because of being a terrible, wicked person. The big things happen because you’ve sold, a thimbleful at a time, your life with God. It’s the same way with getting consumed with idolatry of airline tickets, or careers or things that our hands do, or our children, our babies—being consumed with anything, you can justify most of those things with, “Hey, I’ve got to make a living for my family,” and “Whatever our hand finds to do, do with all our might,” You can sell an awful lot of yourself by the wandering eyes, by the imaginations that you allow to sit in there. If you don’t deal with it ruthlessly, you will pay the price later on. Seeds are very small things, but eventually they reap a harvest that is very large. If you won’t deal with the seeds in a violent way, then you’ll reap a harvest of things that are much bigger and produce many more seeds in themselves.

So, those are choices that we make, and those are the kinds of things that God has given to us to deal with. By His grace, He’s made known His divine

council, and He’s shown us His love for us, He’s given us the Holy Spirit to convict us of guilt in regards to sin. He’s brought to us great and precious promises, “partakers of the divine nature”. He’s given us everything that pertains to life and godliness. He’s poured all of that out on you already. But the one thing He won’t do for you is make you take away those seeds that end up eventually causing you to reap a horrendous harvest of slothfulness, or lack of productivity, or wickedness, and the other two are wickedness, as well, but just not as obvious.

So what I’m saying is, you have got to deal militantly, and I’ve noticed this in my own life, it kinda comes in waves. In the last week or two weeks or so, I’ve begun to pick up again, I’m beginning to notice areas where I didn’t deal with things militantly. I just thought it in my mind, “This really isn’t right, that’s not very good,” and then I went on, but I didn’t grab ahold of it, throw it on the ground, and stomp on it. I just said, “Aw, I really shouldn’t be this way, that’s not very good.” But I didn’t deal with it severely and say, “God, this is sin, it’s utter sin. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it exactly, but I do declare that it’s wickedness, and there is NO place for it in my life!” That doesn’t mean you have all the answers of how to totally eradicate the temptations, but it does mean you call it what God calls it, and you don’t just make a mental note that, “I shouldn’t oughta be this way.” You deal with it ruthlessly. You take the seed and you fling it away from you on purpose. You don’t just say, “Now, that was a bad seed, wasn’t it?” and then allow it to sit there anyway. You’ve got to ruthlessly deal with it or it will eventually reap a harvest that is bigger and bigger and reproduces itself in your own mind. So again, the last couple weeks have been really healthy for me because I’ve noticed areas where I just saw something that was kinda out of line and I knew was not right, and I’d think “That’s not very good and I don’t ever want to do that again,” but there wasn’t the clarity of “NO! I reject it!” There wasn’t that clarity in it. It was just sort of an acknowledgment of “bad”, rather than a rejection and a clarity and a militancy that, “I will not tolerate those thoughts. I confess to You, O God, that this has absolutely no place, it’s wickedness, and Your Son died for things just like this, and I’m sorry about that.” It takes a little bit of mental energy, which I started thinking when Steve was talking, because it requires mental energy to do that. You’ve got to stop and call it what God calls it, confess it, or it’ll just sit there, and you’ll think that you confessed it because you kinda believed that it wasn’t very good. You’ll substitute that for a rejection of it, which is the necessary element in ridding your life of that kind of junk. So, hope that clarifies something for you. It’s been good for me.