“Excuse me, can you repeat what you just said?”
I was certain I heard him wrong.
“ . . . ”
“So you’re saying that if we are struggling consistently with sexual sin, we should wean ourselves off of it by sinning in moderation? If we do said sin six times a week, you’re telling us to limit it to five per week for a time, then to four, three, two, until zero?”
The leader of a highly recommended program for male Christian purity reiterated the sentiment as everyone around me nodded at the sage’s words. After all, we just heard Jimmy’s video testimony about how he went from sinning several times a day to only sinning, well, several times a month. The strategy must work.
The friend who brought me braced himself.
“With all due respect, you can’t be serious. Do you know what sin is?”
As he continued to talk, it was evident that he did not.
To him, making provision for the flesh several times a week was, in the end, beneficial to our holiness. To him, a couple of slices of forbidden fruit wasn’t really that bad. To him, sin was manageable, tamable, controllable. To him, cutting off one’s members seemed like an overreaction — just gently wean yourself off of the sin.
To him, sin was not:
The glory of God not honored.
The holiness of God not reverenced.
The greatness of God not admired.
The power of God not praised.
The truth of God not sought.
The wisdom of God not esteemed.
The beauty of God not treasured.
The goodness of God not savored.
The faithfulness of God not trusted.
The promises of God not believed.
The commandments of God not obeyed.
The justice of God not respected.
The wrath of God not feared.
The grace of God not cherished.
The presence of God not prized.
The person of God not loved.
Nor was it,
The dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love. (John Bunyan)
To him, sin was like breaking the speed limit — nothing personal.
It was not an injury to our greatest Lover, a betrayal of our truest Friend, a dishonoring of our heavenly Father, an act of war against our mighty King, the creature spitting towards his Almighty Creator.
One of these was enough to curse the entire world. But allowing for several per week was apparently fine. Sin was a pet that we should eventually get rid of, but in the meantime, you could scratch its belly and teach it n is not a pet to be walked several times a week. It is a lion, a wolf, a bear. It bites and hunts at will. It attacks as a piranha. It is a restless evil lit ablaze by the fires of hell. Sin cannot be trained, bridled, or domesticated. Cannot be rescued, rehabilitated, or redeemed. Sin will never wear a collar, stick to its kennel, or cease clawing at your throat.
Sin marks us as targets for the great artillery of God’s wrath (Colossians 3:5–6). Sin makes us worthy of death (Romans 1:32). Sin will be found out and hated (Psalm 36:1–2). We never make peace with it, never make provision for it, never mark it in our calendars. Sin must be destroyed by the Spirit if we want to live (Romans 8:13).
Safer to have a pet male tiger than a pet sin.
The Lizard Upon the Shoulder
But many have tried. C.S. Lewis depicts this philosophy pictured above in The Great Divorce. In the book, a Ghost who has been kept out of heaven tries to keep his pet sin, a red lizard. In the scene, the Ghost constantly scolds the pet upon his shoulder. An angel asks the Ghost if he would like the lizard silenced.
“Of course I would,” said the Ghost.
“Then I will kill him,” said the Angel, taking a step forward.
“Oh — ah — look out! You’re burning me. Keep away,” said the Ghost retreating.
“Don’t you want him killed?”
“You didn’t say am killed?”
“You didn’t say anything about killing him at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that.”
“It’s the only way,” said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the Lizard. “Shall I kill it?”
“ . . . ”
“Well, there’s time to discuss that later.”
“There is no time. May I kill it.”
“Please, I never meant to be such a nuisance. Please — really — don’t bother. Look! It’s gone to sleep of its own accord. I’m sure it’ll be all right now. Thanks ever so much.”
“May I kill it?”
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s the slightest necessity for that. I’m sure I shall be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it.”
“The gradual process is of no use at all.”
More excuses are given, but now we overhear the lizard whispering in his ear,
“Be careful,” it said. “He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you’ll be without me for ever and ever. It’s not natural. How could you live? You’d be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn’t understand. He’s only a cold, bloodless abstract thing. It may be natural for him, but it isn’t for us. Yes, yes. I know there are no real pleasures now, only dreams. But aren’t they better than nothing? And I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams — all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent . . . ”
It is easy to fall into patterns of training our sin rather than killing it.
If your biggest reason to fight sin is that you don’t want to confess it again to an accountability group, you’re training your sin. If you only pray about the sin after you’ve “done it again,” you’re training your sin. If you do not seek Christ’s presence, if you do not commune with him in prayer and his word, if you do not invite believers into your life to stick daggers into your sin, you are training your sin to play dead without killing it.
Go and Sin No More
If you have a pet sin, you must renounce it at once. Your salvation depends on it.
Only those who have a string of sin’s carcasses behind them will enter into heaven. Only those who “work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling” knowing that God is working in them “to will and to work for his good pleasure” will be saved (Philippians 2:12–13).
But what about being saved by faith alone? You’re not. You’re justified through faith alone. Final salvation comes through justification and sanctification — both initiated and sustained by God’s grace.
There is a holiness that, if you do not have it, will keep you from seeing the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). “But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13).
Do not be deceived. If you sow to the flesh, you will reap ruin (Galatians 6:. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Many will say on that day that they knew him, but he will cast them out into darkness because they were “workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:21–23). Warnings are active for the Christian, and the Spirit uses them to keep us fearing God and turning from sin.
The Christian doesn’t train his dragons. We do not plan on sinning five times per week, then four, then three, until infrequent times of rebellion. After he pardons the sinner, Jesus does not say go and sin less; he says, go and sin no more. Be killing your pets, or your pets will end up killing you.
Greg Morse is a content strategist for desiringGod.org and graduate of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He and his wife Abigail live in St. Paul.

http://tellmystory.com.ng/how-to-train-your-dragons-killing-pet-sins-before-they-kill-you/

All these self-righteous preachers. You can't even live up to half the standard you preach.

The aim is simply to look righteous while you remain dirty on the inside.

Humans has no capacity to live up to God's standard of righteousness, that is the reason for the coming of Jesus christ.... So He will become our righteousness in God.

Go back and read your Bible. This time, read the new testament slowly.

Is it that easy....

Ok, I made front page today

K

Only God knows who serve him and He is the only one who can determine who is gonna make heaven . With all this Life temptation? Money, Women , Post , and lots more ..... Well Alihamdulilah

What the hell did I just read? If I made a naira for every useless NL thread that made front page I for don rich pass Bill Gates.

May God keep leading us in the right path

WTF

Train your dragons

i thought op was going to write about Daenerys Targaryen

nothing make man no go see for nairaland on Sunday

Ehn! The Bible is my standard not any preacher.


Genius J

hm

only God can help tgis generation

We give God all the glory ...

The way the article is written, you'll think the OP is God himself!

Stop living mythological lives
When will Christians become thinking humans?
It still baffles me that after 200 years we still can't think.

Christianity has nothing to do with anyone's soul
Its a well packaged web of lies

Once you begin to uncover these lies, the whole religion falls, and you see it for all it is.

Do you guys really think the world started 3500 years ago?
Have you ever seen anything living made from clay?
Do people procreate without intercourse?

The creator of the Sun
The wind
The waters
As mighty as those things are

Do you really think the creator s gonna take paper made from the tree which he created himself?

God is very powerful, in short the most powerful, that's why he couldn't send an African saviour
The saviour had just to be from Israel
At a time when there wasn't wireless tech

Think of how many people that would have died from Palestine to Africa without knowing any Jesus even at the time he was living?

God is kind and God is love, when will Gods pity switch to Africa?
Everyone needs to know we have been under siege for thousands of years.

Religions are keeping that siege from ending
That's why we aren't developed
That's why we won't grow
That's why we won't think


Look around you, Africans rest at the bottom of the social ladder anywhere in the world.

When will my Christian friends become reasonable?

Your politicians have been swearing on the bible for decades without anything happening!

You dare swear with Ayilala or Ogun and you don't die within seven days?

What kind of God do you believe in?
The one who got your people into slavery?
Who commanded your mothers be taken as harlots by the Arabs?
The same God who commanded the castration of your fathers?
The same God that allowed your people work to death on those sugar plantations?
Ignorance kills faster than any devil
Ignorance doesn't kill individually
Its highly contagious and kills by the multitude



Do you think you have to shout for God to hear yet you say he is everywhere?

You have to find him yet he is omnipresent?



My argument is that those who gave us religions did it for economic, social, political reasons
The earlier we start looking for God outside the oppressors eyes, they faster we grow.

Peace!

God bless you for this tip. Sin shouldn't be massaged, it should be gotten rid of. That's the message summar. More ggrace

Dem go later dey stare at naked women on the streets.. Awon fake preachers

Bleep Bleep ppl- men,boys women and girls - na wa for una . As for me I can't stoop so low to bestial level and b fornicating or committing adultery. Is it not hypocrisy that u are clearly going against ur Creator yet u still claim to be worshipping Him? I can't imagine myself going to the masjid to pray and still b strafing like some wild beast

Why is it that Nairaland always regulate Islam threads, they will ask you that their question before you are allowed to comment in their thread but doesn't do same for Christian threads,
They leave it open for all sorts of attacks and pungent posters, both those that will end up making those with strong faith to question their faith and believe.

This is the height of injustice mehn. Tueh!
Happy Sunday beautiful creatures of God!

Hehe I c dragon I Com think say Im Dey market make I turn NIGHTKING

mployer:
All these self-righteous preachers. You can't even live up to half the standard you preach.

The aim is simply to look righteous while you remain dirty on the inside.

Humans has no capacity to live up to God's standard of righteousness, that is the reason for the coming of Jesus christ.... So He will become our righteousness in God.

Go back and read your Bible. This time, read the new testament slowly.

Abraham, Enoch these were men Jesus Christ on earth was faced with various temptations and trials yet without sin. True: he’s our righteousness and through Him we are sanctified and made holy but would God say you should be Holy as He is if He knows you can’t? There’s no excuse to try keep pressing on till your body and other members is completely for the Lord.
You can be like Christ if you keep to His Statutes

Priceless200:
Why is it that Nairaland always regulate Islam threads, they will ask you that their question before you are allowed to comment in their thread but doesn't do same for Christian threads,
They leave it open for all sorts of attacks and pungent posters, both those that will end up making those with strong faith to question their faith and believe.

This is the height of injustice mehn. Tueh!
Happy Sunday beautiful creatures of God!

Don't stop mentioning seun and other moderators till they do the needful.

God bless you for this OP. I finally have a peace of mind as I thought I'm the only one with the understanding of not "nursing" sin but outright purging of it.
Teachers and scholars alike these days keep saying, 'oh, you know what? You can't once and for all leave sin; it's a gradual process". Then I ask them why Jesus told the adulterous woman to 'go and sin no more', if she was meant to reduce the rate of her adultery, slowly and one step at a time.
May the Holy Spirit continue to fill us till we overflow. Amen.

mployer:
All these self-righteous preachers. You can't even live up to half the standard you preach.

The aim is simply to look righteous while you remain dirty on the inside.

Humans has no capacity to live up to God's standard of righteousness, that is the reason for the coming of Jesus christ.... So He will become our righteousness in God.

Go back and read your Bible. This time, read the new testament slowly.

in other words, you agree with taming sins instead of killing it?

sunky97:
“Excuse me, can you repeat what you just said?”
I was certain I heard him wrong.
“ . . . ”
“So you’re saying that if we are struggling consistently with sexual sin, we should wean ourselves off of it by sinning in moderation? If we do said sin six times a week, you’re telling us to limit it to five per week for a time, then to four, three, two, until zero?”
The leader of a highly recommended program for male Christian purity reiterated the sentiment as everyone around me nodded at the sage’s words. After all, we just heard Jimmy’s video testimony about how he went from sinning several times a day to only sinning, well, several times a month. The strategy must work.
The friend who brought me braced himself.
“With all due respect, you can’t be serious. Do you know what sin is?”
As he continued to talk, it was evident that he did not.
To him, making provision for the flesh several times a week was, in the end, beneficial to our holiness. To him, a couple of slices of forbidden fruit wasn’t really that bad. To him, sin was manageable, tamable, controllable. To him, cutting off one’s members seemed like an overreaction — just gently wean yourself off of the sin.
To him, sin was not:
The glory of God not honored.
The holiness of God not reverenced.
The greatness of God not admired.
The power of God not praised.
The truth of God not sought.
The wisdom of God not esteemed.
The beauty of God not treasured.
The goodness of God not savored.
The faithfulness of God not trusted.
The promises of God not believed.
The commandments of God not obeyed.
The justice of God not respected.
The wrath of God not feared.
The grace of God not cherished.
The presence of God not prized.
The person of God not loved.
Nor was it,
The dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of his love. (John Bunyan)
To him, sin was like breaking the speed limit — nothing personal.
It was not an injury to our greatest Lover, a betrayal of our truest Friend, a dishonoring of our heavenly Father, an act of war against our mighty King, the creature spitting towards his Almighty Creator.
One of these was enough to curse the entire world. But allowing for several per week was apparently fine. Sin was a pet that we should eventually get rid of, but in the meantime, you could scratch its belly and teach it n is not a pet to be walked several times a week. It is a lion, a wolf, a bear. It bites and hunts at will. It attacks as a piranha. It is a restless evil lit ablaze by the fires of hell. Sin cannot be trained, bridled, or domesticated. Cannot be rescued, rehabilitated, or redeemed. Sin will never wear a collar, stick to its kennel, or cease clawing at your throat.
Sin marks us as targets for the great artillery of God’s wrath (Colossians 3:5–6). Sin makes us worthy of death (Romans 1:32). Sin will be found out and hated (Psalm 36:1–2). We never make peace with it, never make provision for it, never mark it in our calendars. Sin must be destroyed by the Spirit if we want to live (Romans 8:13).
Safer to have a pet male tiger than a pet sin.
The Lizard Upon the Shoulder
But many have tried. C.S. Lewis depicts this philosophy pictured above in The Great Divorce. In the book, a Ghost who has been kept out of heaven tries to keep his pet sin, a red lizard. In the scene, the Ghost constantly scolds the pet upon his shoulder. An angel asks the Ghost if he would like the lizard silenced.
“Of course I would,” said the Ghost.
“Then I will kill him,” said the Angel, taking a step forward.
“Oh — ah — look out! You’re burning me. Keep away,” said the Ghost retreating.
“Don’t you want him killed?”
“You didn’t say am killed?”
“You didn’t say anything about killing him at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that.”
“It’s the only way,” said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the Lizard. “Shall I kill it?”
“ . . . ”
“Well, there’s time to discuss that later.”
“There is no time. May I kill it.”
“Please, I never meant to be such a nuisance. Please — really — don’t bother. Look! It’s gone to sleep of its own accord. I’m sure it’ll be all right now. Thanks ever so much.”
“May I kill it?”
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s the slightest necessity for that. I’m sure I shall be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it.”
“The gradual process is of no use at all.”
More excuses are given, but now we overhear the lizard whispering in his ear,
“Be careful,” it said. “He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will! Then you’ll be without me for ever and ever. It’s not natural. How could you live? You’d be only a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn’t understand. He’s only a cold, bloodless abstract thing. It may be natural for him, but it isn’t for us. Yes, yes. I know there are no real pleasures now, only dreams. But aren’t they better than nothing? And I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past, but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams — all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent . . . ”
It is easy to fall into patterns of training our sin rather than killing it.
If your biggest reason to fight sin is that you don’t want to confess it again to an accountability group, you’re training your sin. If you only pray about the sin after you’ve “done it again,” you’re training your sin. If you do not seek Christ’s presence, if you do not commune with him in prayer and his word, if you do not invite believers into your life to stick daggers into your sin, you are training your sin to play dead without killing it.
Go and Sin No More
If you have a pet sin, you must renounce it at once. Your salvation depends on it.
Only those who have a string of sin’s carcasses behind them will enter into heaven. Only those who “work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling” knowing that God is working in them “to will and to work for his good pleasure” will be saved (Philippians 2:12–13).
But what about being saved by faith alone? You’re not. You’re justified through faith alone. Final salvation comes through justification and sanctification — both initiated and sustained by God’s grace.
There is a holiness that, if you do not have it, will keep you from seeing the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). “But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13).
Do not be deceived. If you sow to the flesh, you will reap ruin (Galatians 6:. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Many will say on that day that they knew him, but he will cast them out into darkness because they were “workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:21–23). Warnings are active for the Christian, and the Spirit uses them to keep us fearing God and turning from sin.
The Christian doesn’t train his dragons. We do not plan on sinning five times per week, then four, then three, until infrequent times of rebellion. After he pardons the sinner, Jesus does not say go and sin less; he says, go and sin no more. Be killing your pets, or your pets will end up killing you.
Greg Morse is a content strategist for desiringGod.org and graduate of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He and his wife Abigail live in St. Paul.

http://tellmystory.com.ng/how-to-train-your-dragons-killing-pet-sins-before-they-kill-you/

.

wonderfull post