7 Deadly sins (Laziness)

I will write about this later.

7 Deadly sins (Lust)

Lust: To have an intense desire.

Ok, so of the seven deadly sins, this is the one I struggle with the most. I am a night and day difference from where I was 5-10 years ago, but I still have my moments.

I call lust the silent destroyer because unlike other sins, you can hide lust within the depths of your being and nobody is privy to your issue......but it destroys you from within.

I could be talking to a woman and looking her in the eyes and sincerely listening to her intently, all the while catching glimpses of her body and wondering what it might look like with nothing else on.

I can recall when I really started trying to remove lust from my life. My wife and I were watching an award ceremony on TV and my wife said, "Tom look at the dress on this woman, she might as well not even be wearing anything".

She was actually helping me along in my sin without knowing it.

At that moment I sat her down on the couch and told her that I struggle with lust. I explained that I had no desire to act on any of it, but it was a real struggle and I would need her help to get me through it.

I am convinced that the majority of my lust issue stems from having intercourse with other women before I found my wife and got married.

God doesn't tell us not to have sex before marriage to be mean.

He tells us not to have sex before marriage because He knows that the road afterwards is going to be so much more difficult to travel down afterwards.

What truly helped me out of it was I had a great mentor in Christ named Pastor Jake (He is still a great mentor in my life). He shared with me and listened to me and told me about this book called Every Man's Battle that he thought would help me even further.

It did.

To any man that reads this that struggles with lust..........which is every man that reads this, I highly recommend that book.

I still have my moments.

I am imperfect..........but my marriage is so much better now that I am in the trenches fighting against the sin instead of being buddies with it.

When you lust after another woman. You steal from your spouse. You steal the thoughts that she and only she is entitled to.

Lust.

Get in the trenches, men.

7 Deadly sins (Envy)

Envy: painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.

Did you ever know anyone that no matter what they did in life it resulted in a win?

It seems like no matter if they make a bad choice or a good one that they come out of it smelling like a rose.

I knew this guy that life just happened right for him. Anything he touched turned to gold.

We were friends.

It was at a stage in my life where I felt like everything that came to me I had to work extremely hard to get it. Nothing came easy for me.

That alone is a tough thing to go through but add to the mix a guy who seemingly worked hard for nothing, and everything just showed up on his lap.

It began to drive me insane.

I seriously remember praying one day:

"God, why are things so difficult for me? I am trying to live my life the way you ask me to and this guy doesn't pray, doesn't read the Bible, doesn't go to church, and you are bending over backwards to make sure he has it all"!

Well God wasn't listening to me that day. This dude just kept reaping things he wasn't sowing.

I began to despise this guy even though he did nothing wrong to me.

My friend turned into my enemy, not because of something he did to me, but because of my perception that I was more deserving of good things than he was.

I would almost guarantee that if my envy had not gotten in the way, that he and I would be good friends to this day.

Do you see the danger of envy?

God tells us, "I am sufficient".

Envy shouts back, "I deserve more".

Envy leads to destruction.

Countries go to war all the time because of what another country has and they feel entitled to it.
Proverbs 14:30 -A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.

Perhaps you are feeling uncomfortable today.

Maybe you are in need of some inner peace.

I would ask you, are you suffering from spiritual osteoporosis?

Do you need to let go of some envy?

Let it go.

It will give peace to your soul.

7 Deadly sins (Wrath)

Wrath; Vengeance or punishment as the consequence of anger.

Back in the 80's there was a Star Trek movie called "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan".

It has a ring to it doesn't it?

Khan wouldn't have sounded nearly as threatening if the title was "Star Trek II: The anger of Khan", or "Star Trek II: Khan is really mad now".

That just doesn't work as well. That's because the word "Wrath" has some weight behind it.

When we hear the word, we get a picture in our minds don't we?

Wrath is something that we fear from others, but we fantasize about those that have wronged us, suffering under our wrath…….maybe that's just me.

So why is wrath considered a deadly sin? If someone has wronged you then they deserve your wrath right?

Well, there are a couple of problems with that.
1.) In the Bible, God says, "Vengeance is Mine". That's fairly self-explanatory.
2.) When Jesus was asked how many times we are to forgive someone who has wronged us, His answer was 70 times 7 (That's 490 times). Nobody has ever wronged you more than that……deal.
3.) When we seek vengeance on someone who hurt us, we never truly seek to just get even, it's always done with the intent of hurting them slightly worse than they hurt us just so they are certain that we got the best of it.

God tells us that He is just and He will deal with people on His terms. Wrath tells God that we have a better way of handling it than He does.

Do you see the danger?

If God created us (and I believe He did), then where do we get off telling Him that we have a better way of handling those that have wronged us. He created us. I think He should probably have the say so on vengeance.

What if you baked a cake and you made it exactly how you wanted it, and when you put the cake on the table it stood up and started telling you that you didn't mix the ingredients correctly, and the oven heat wasn't set right.

The first thing you should do is call a psychiatrist, but after you hung up the phone you would smash that cake and throw it in the garbage.

"No cake I made is gonna talk to me like that"!

I know it's a crazy example but it truly is the same thing when we tell God that our wrath is just what the doctor ordered.

Let's let God be God and we can just spend our time forgiving those who have wronged us, and trying not to wrong anyone else.

Wrath is a heavy word…….and I just don't think we have the strength to support it.

Forgiveness.

That has a pretty good ring to it as well.

7 Deadly sins (Greed)

My wife and I took the kids to this annual sale at the local high school this last weekend and my son found this Pac-Man game that plugs right into the TV, for $1.00.

Some of you reading this are like, "What's Pac-Man"?

If you said that, you need to wash your mouth out with soap, and not just any soap, Lifebuoy.

Pac-Man is one of the greatest video games ever invented.

We used to hang out at this corner store after elementary school and drop quarters into that game like our life depended on it.

We got to be fairly good at the game but I had a downfall.

It was no doubt a downfall that plagued millions of unsuspecting kids world-wide.

Some of you know what I'm talking about.

It was the fruit.

You see, on every level there was a moment when a cherry, or an orange, or some other random piece of food popped up on the screen and if you ate it, points were rewarded.

The goal of the game was to clear the screen, the fruit was just a bonus.

But the fruit was so tempting.

How many times had my Pac-Man met it's fate by my magnetic movement toward the fruit, when all I had to do was eat one more dot, and advance to the next level?

It's funny because it's a game, but all too often it's our downfall in the real world too.

Greed.

We seek more when what we have is sufficient.

The quest for one more is a dangerous quest because sooner or later we end up with more than we can handle.

Greed is an ugly sin too, because when greed comes to the surface in our lives, it reveals our heart to others.

Satan could have used any tactic to get to Adam and Eve in the garden, but he appealed to their greed.

Adam and Eve had it all.

They had everything they needed.

They were living the good life.

They didn't have to worry about bill collectors. When April rolled around in the Garden of Eden, they had no fear of the IRS.

They had it good!!

But Satan told Eve that he could give her more and just like Pac-Man, she went for the fruit.

The rest is history.

Satan chose to appeal to their greed because it's an innate characteristic....so it was easy.

Given enough time and a place where we think nobody can see us, and we will exhibit all kinds of greed, won't we?

The truth is that God's grace is sufficient for us.

We don't need anything above and beyond that, and when we start looking for more than we need, God is very good at teaching us that greed is not an attribute we should have.

He threw Adam and Eve out of paradise for it.

Allow God to be sufficient for you.

Just clear the level and forget about the fruit.

You will be glad you did.

7 Deadly sins (Pride)

Proverbs 16:18 - "Pride goes before destruction.."

Most people have a particular sin that continually trips them up.

For me, it's pride.

That's even tough for me to type. I don't get to watch much TV usually, but the other night I got to catch a show called "Bully Beatdown". It is basically a show about people who get bullied all the time and they bring the bully to this show to give them a taste of their own medicine. The Bully agrees to enter this cage with a professional MMA fighter in the hopes that they can survive the few rounds and win some money.

In the episode I watched, the fight was extremely one sided. The bully was just getting what we used to call back in the day, a "First class butt whoopin".

The professional fighter was just toying with the bully and basically kept closing the bully's windpipe, forcing the bully to "tap out" repeatedly. The host of the show kept asking the bully, "Do you want to quit now? Do you want to give up?", and the bully just kept coming back for more punishment.

He absolutely refused to just quit even though it was extremely apparent that he had no chance. In the second round the referee called the fight over.

Pride comes before the fall.

Pride is what got Satan thrown from the luxury of Heaven.

In my opinion, it is the most dangerous sin there is.

God says to humble yourself. Pride says, "God, get outta my face".

At least in my case, pride is attractive and something I tend to run towards because it feels good to get the credit and glory and recognition for something. That's the truth.

Maybe you struggle with pride like me. The following verse should make your knees buckle: Matthew 23:12 - But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

I don't know about you, but I do a fine job of humiliating myself, I really don't need God's help.

So it is my goal to be completely pride free.

You might be saying to yourself, "That is impossible".

But I would remind you as I remind myself what Paul said in Philippians 4:13 - "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Regardless of your struggle I hope this encourages you, that you too, can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

7 Deadly sins (Gluttony)

You won't find the seven deadly sins list in the Bible. It's not there.

All 7 are sins to be sure, but the list was conceived by man.

The 7 deadly sins are: Wrath, greed, slothfulness, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

The reason that these 7 sins made a list is because they are thought to be the root for every other conceivable sin known to man.....and we know plenty of them don't we?

A friend of mine said, "why don't you blog about the 7 deadly sins and how they affect people and why we succumb to them."

So let me tackle the "why we succumb to them" portion first. This should cover the "why" for each of them. We succumb to sin simply because we are born with a natural bent toward sin. Think we aren't?

Have any of you ever had to teach your kid how to disobey?

No, you never had to do that. You had to teach them to obey, they already knew how to disobey.

We give into sin because we want to. Our human nature desires sin.

Now, I am not going in any particular order, but thought I would start with Gluttony because of something I saw this last weekend that struck me as odd.

Gluttony: Excessive eating or drinking -dictionary.com

First of all, the Bible says this in Proverbs 23:21, "..for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

I know there are non-believers that read this blog, but I don't think I have ever run across even a nonbeliever that looked at any proverb and said, "That's stupid".

So regardless, if you're a Christian or not, I think we can agree that there is a ton of wisdom in Proverbs, and this particular verse is saying that gluttons become poor.

How does this happen? How do you get from gluttony to the poorhouse?

Think about your last Thanksgiving dinner. After your third plate you unbuckled your belt and went and laid on the couch watching the football game.....occasionally waking up to see what the score was.

There was no work getting done around your house for the next 24 hours. Am I lying?

Maybe you drank too much beer or wine. You woke up the next morning with a hangover.

How much work did you get done that day?

Gluttony leads to a lack of motivation, and a lack of motivation can certainly lead you to the poorhouse, can't it?

The biggest problem with the sin of gluttony, is that you don't hear many sermons about it.

I think the reason is because it's acceptable by the world's standards.

America is one of the most obese nations on the planet. Many pastors are included in that statistic, and it's difficult to talk about the kettle being black when the pot is too.

The church has helped make gluttony acceptable.

This last weekend I drove by a church with a big sign out front. You have seen this church too. Maybe not the same one, but they are all over the place.

The sign simply said, "Friday night - ALL YOU CAN EAT fish fry."

Nothing like encouraging sin huh?

How well would it go over if the same church sign said,

"Friday night - ALL YOU CAN WATCH PORN."

Just because it's acceptable, don't make it right.

Try something today. Start paying attention to what you put in your body, and how often.

Cut back your calorie count. Cut back on your portion size, and see if you don't find some energy that you haven't had in a long time.

I would bet you would be a better parent and spouse for it.

More energy to play with your children.

More energy to do..........that thing with your spouse!!!

Now, that's what I'm talking about!