OVERCOMING SEXUAL PASSIONS by Zac Poonen

Thanks for posting this Greg. God has used Brother Zac to bring so many beautiful hidden truths of God to light that have set so many free.

sadly, this is law and will never work.

Grace is why people get Saved and Grace is why people live right.

Begin first of all, by humbling yourself in all situations. Avoid all arrogance. Then begin to be hard-working and diligent in whatever you do. Then try fasting – avoiding food – once in a while. And fourthly, begin to think a little more about the needs of people around you and see how you can help them.

1. How is one humbled? By accepting Perfect Grace. Grace removes ALL efforts of self - That is the most humbling. No self-religion. So that eliminates the rest:

2. Be hard-working... is that sounding like that pastor that said to do push ups every time you have a lustful thought? Yes. And does Jesus say to work and work harder to stop sinful activity? NO! He said to Rest in Him. What did He mean when He said to Pluck your eye out if it offend you? It means, even if you did do that, the inward evil desire would still be there. Hence, the need to Radical Grace. Like the kind Paul White ministers.

3. Fasting, another work. Work harder! Fast more! like the Catholics who commit spiritual fornication by all their useless acts of contrition. works and law will never do what Grace does.

4. think of others. That's nice... even mormons and JWs and muslims and hindus do this... If they would just have an encounter with Ultimate Grace and Favor, they would not see good morals as a merit to stick in God's face, to in turn, have Him reward us with earned righteousness. Morality and community outreach without resting in His Finished Work are religion at best.

That's what I meant by what I said. Be not deceived! God's Righteousness cannot be bought!

knitefall,

Did you ever check out all the NT scriptures that teach one to 'put on'? Try it an see what it teaches you. Use e-Sword...

Knitefall...

1. We are saved by grace through FAITH (Eph 2:8). Steps of obedience are first. We must first surrender our will and submit under the authority of Christ, WHICH IS CALLED FAITH. :)

We are saved by faith, but if you do not believe you will not be saved, brother.

Belief is an action, a working of the will.

2. For he that is entered into his rest: he also hath ceased from his own works as God did from his. Heb 4:10
How does one enter to rest?? By first surrendering to Christ.

3. Fasting helps to put to death the flesh, helps to "cease from one's own works"

Just like Jesus-is-God said, there are SOOOO MANY verses in the New Testament that tells us to put down the flesh. To bring your body into subjection(fasting). Paul is speaking to Christians in these letters, not to the lost!

In order to get clean I have to take a shower right? But why, if I could just believe I can get clean right?? haha no. :) I have to be cleansed by the life-giving flow. Which takes faith and obedience to His Word. "Follow me and I will give you rest."

"give and take" relationship

my friends, some of you cannot be farther from the Truth in Jesus.

What can we offer the Lord? Besides the Faith that He gives us to have Faith in Him with?

This is very good discussion BTW. and I'm happy to be involved.

There are many that are struggling with sinful thought and activity and love God but do not know that all their sins are gone.

I taught my little 5 and 6 year olds in class that God is no longer angry at us. An why? Because sin was judged already. How much? All! So, if all was judged at Calvary, what is left for you and me to pay for?

I mean every respect of offense. To religion that is but no one personally. Many Scriptures that have been pulled out have nothing to do with the flesh works of the post.

Flesh is not sinning acts of sins. Flesh is attempting to offer God anything in order to get anything. That's living by the flesh and not the Spirit. It's also called religion, no matter how many holy words you attach to it.

now, how do we learn obedience? Not by "trying harder" not to sin! But obedience to what? Specifically, WHO? To The Faith of the Son of God! In other words, Christ and Him Crucified for payment of all sin.

To answer the quote directly, Where at all do we see any example of us giving anything besides filthy rags to our Lord? Filthy rags are actions and behaviors that we think God is pleased with.

No, none of that. We can only TAKE from our Lord. And He gave freely. You're getting good preaching whether you realize it or not.

By the renewal of the mind we are Transformed from Glory to Glory into His image. By seeing Jesus, high and Lifted above all self can ever offer, we are made into His image. By knowing what He has done for us and all we are freely given, we are changed from the inside out. Supernaturally and never by efforts of self-law.

I mean no personal harm to anyone but I do mean destruction to the flesh's attempt at stealing God's Glory. He hates religion.

I THANK YOU FATHER FOR YOUR WORD!!! I truly thank Jesus for HIS WORD!!! His word is the ONLY true words that we as Christians have to cling to IF we truly believe in Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and truly seek and desire to know the truth of the one we call Father.

I say all of this because as one who is still yet learning and striving, it can be very easy for me to be swayed back and forth with all kinds of teachings, but I THANK GOD (I can't say that enough!) for HIS GRACE, and HIS WORD, and HIS LOVE, and MERCY in my life, and always leading back to HIS WORD when doubt, or confusion tries to set in!

KNITEFALL, everything that you have stated for someone like me who barely escaped the flames of hell, and who is everyday fighting the good fight of Christianity to stay in the grace of God seems too good to be true, and in fact... I believe that it is too good to be true. When I think over all of the things that I have done... all of the gross sins that I was caught up in and some that I still battle, but with God's help WILL overcome... to believe that because I profess to believe that Jesus died for my sins, ALL of my sins are now washed away, so that's it. I just kick back and rest in knowing that it is done with no work other than just believing on my part is a hard concept to wrap my mind around even though it is TEMPTING to do so.

I DON'T AT ALL believe that one has to literally work his/her way into heaven by running around slaving doing all kinds of outwardly "good things." I do absolutely believe that we are to carry out the WORKS OF THE SPIRIT, which bring about much fruit in our lives. I most certainly believe that we are to HUMBLE ourselves before the Lord, by putting off our flesh... fornication, lying, stealing, etc... so that we are lifted up by God's grace and formed more into His likeness.

How do you explain what Paul was saying when he made this statement; 1Co 9:27 But I keep under[buffet] my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

Reading the post of others who are in opposition to your thoughts, and seeing that they have provided scriptures (God's words, not man), unless I don't believe God, and I do... His word, His thoughts, His commands, are what we should be adhering, and clinging to. Not our own because I would love to believe your thoughts on this... trust me. It would make for a much simpler, NOT so selfless life of living for God.

I would love to see scriptures and your thoughts on them that would back up your belief on this topic, Please.

Thank you and God Bless. I am very interested in learning more about the Word of God.

awesome post FooFee

I must go to sleep for work tomorrow. And I have already compiled a list of Scripture for us to go over later. good night.

knitefall wrote:
sadly, this is law and will never work.

Everyone who has ever been raised in church knows that Sodom was full of sexual sins; I thought it was very astute of Zac to bring out that God never said he destroyed them because of their sexual sins BUT because of their pride, laziness, gluttony and neglecting the poor and needy.

I believe Zac is right on because I’ve heard Derek Prince associate that those who have sexual sins have problems with gluttony.

And sexual sins are all about self-indulgence, are they not? So it stands to reason that that self-indulgence spreads its tentacles into the other four areas of a person’s life and MORE if that person is married.

If a person who has problems with pornography, adultery, homosexuality; if they would take an honest look into their life (with the Holy Ghost’s help); they would see that self-indulgence or selfishness is a huge problem.

God bless you,
Lisa

We shall have a wonderful time soon. I have the Scriptures ready and after work today, I will present them. It will be night by the time I get loosed from being a bondslave... so have fun in the while.

Here is a snippet of my Gospel:

Because the posted topic is really about 'Overcoming Sins,' there is only One, very narrow road to walk, if you're going to correctly have the eyes to 'see' it.

parable,

let's say you come home and tell your wife,

"Honey, I didn't cheat on you today because the Law says not to and I didn't want to go to hell for breaking the law..."

Now, She wouldn't be excited about that would she? If anything, she'd doubt and not be very happy at all about you keeping law.

Yet in Christianity, we treat God as if the highest form of worship is to try and obey all the Law. And this so in this mentallity, "Okay, I got Saved and now I can do it... thank you Jesus, I got it from here."

Jesus came to fulfill it. It's paid for! Which is another topic of paying (making sacrifice) for sins not covered by the Blood of the Lamb.

If the bank forgives a debt, what use would it be to get a job and try and pay it off yourself?

They'd think you're crazy! So why do many Christians, w/o realizing they're doing it, try and pray real hard to get sin out, read their Bible until they fall asleep to get sins out, fast to 'put the flesh down' and all other manner of attempting to earn by the law, something from God?

The Holy Spirit did not teach them that! And they do not understand the sin problem and do not understand what the flesh really is.

Now let me give you the other chapter to our story.

"Honey, I know you LOVE me and when that opportunity came, all I could think about was of how much you LOVE me and I had to just come home to see you."

The Father treats us with such great love.

Yet, we got idiot preachers saying total garbage like, "If you preach that from behind the pulpit, you'll have a Church full of sin! They need to hear about breaking God's commandments! They need to hear about judgment of Hell! They need to be told all about the horror of Sin so we can scare them into Heaven!"

Um, NO! Not at all WHAT-SO-EVER!!!

It's the wife who says, "Dear, I'll always love you, no matter if you beat me, spit in my face, pull my hair, run around on me, say mean things to me. No matter what you say, there is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you."

Now, see the difference? At that moment, there is not a bone in that man's body that desires to do ANY harm to his wife.

And how much more Does God love on us? He gives us FREE Grace- that's worse than 'greasy' Grace isn't it? Take as much as you want!!!

If you understand Grace and how it came to be (Calvary's Holy Loving Sacrifice) you will not see a license to sin at all. What man thinks, "Hmm, my wife will love me no matter what. I think I'll beat her and cheat with others?"

That is all the time I have for this morning. I'll be posting tonight. Don't go in the Rapture w/o me, Shawn.

We are called to lift our eyes away from ourselves and look into the face of our Loving Savior. It is the the beauty of HIS holiness, HIS righteousness and HIS perfection that changes us. Looking upon our own failure and wretchedness and "trying" different things to "overcome", only reveals to us how impotent we are to change the inward. Oh, we may change the outward, to be sure, but then the subtle work of the devil will fill our heart with pride, self-assurance and self-justification.

Jesus Himself said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). It’s all Jesus, all Jesus, all Jesus. That’s how we entered the new life, that’s how we walk it, that’s how we are glorified and live for ever with Him.

It’s all of grace. All of it.

We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony. Our testimony is Him, all Him. It is not us. Our testimony is His testimony, JESUS. The testimony of who He is and what HE has done. Not our works of righteousness (self-discipline, fasting, etc) That is very Hindu-ish.

Rom 5:2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

We have access by faith (the only thing that pleases God) into His grace. And this is the only thing we can stand in.

Faith, not works. You will forever be finding some terrible thing within you to fast about, to "try" to overcome. And as you "master" each sin in your life, the pride will grow inside you. This is the great "head fake" that the enemy does to us. He moves us away from beholding the Lord's beauty to beholding our failures and then moves us into subtle self-righteousness. That is why there are so many "character based" ministries today. They emphasize character and have many "gold nuggets" of teaching on how you can improve your character. It is nothing more than legal righteousness and not righteousness by faith. Many of the children grow up and become shipwrecked, in these families, because their life growing up was one of legalism and not all-consuming love for the Lord. There was no inward encounter with God, only outward obedience.

Heb 4:9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
Heb 4:10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
Heb 4:11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

Foofee, look to Jesus, love Jesus. Concentrating on your sin and weakness, and trying to overcome them will only put you into a deeper and more dangerous bondage. One that will cause you to justify yourself before God.

Read Psalm 51 to see what David did when he fell into sexual sin and was confronted by God's prophet. Did he rely on his own strength, cleverness, discipline or did he go to God?

It agrees perfectly with James 4.

Jas 4:5 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
Jas 4:6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
Jas 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Jas 4:8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
Jas 4:9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
Jas 4:10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

Many take James 4 to mean that we need to do a lot of self-discipline but taking the NT in context, these things we know:

The way you resist the Devil, is by drawing near to God. The way that you cleanse your hands and purify your heart is by repentance which is drawing near to God. You must forsake pride to draw near to God. Drawing near to God shows that you are humbling yourself.

Notice that James 4 never tells us to try this or try that. To work, work, work, on the "easy" sins first and then the hard ones will go away.

Draw near to God. James 4 and Psalm 51 tell us how to.

Why?

Because you can do nothing apart from Him. Abide in Him, rest in His finished work.

If Sodom and Gomorrah repented (which acknowledges God through humility), God would have had mercy.

If Sodom and Gomorrah, instead of repenting, just used self-discipline to stop their sinful activities on the outside, which requires no acknowledgment of God or inward change, they would have still been destroyed.

Likewise, if you clean up your life by your efforts and discipline, will you be saved and what will you teach others?

Some men have great self-discipline and are not drawn to outwardly wicked sins (they are all wicked by the way). And because some of us have never participated in the classically wicked sins of the flesh, we could easily tend to think that we are something when we are not.

What is Jesus saying here?

Luk 18:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
Luk 18:11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
Luk 18:12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
Luk 18:13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
Luk 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Your self-discpline and self-mastery over sin will only exalt you.