| What Are You Feeding Yourself Today? |
This page is written to myself. Perhaps it will be helpful to someone else who is struggling with this problem.
God has recently chastised me for the things I allow into my mind and my body. Most at fault is the "eyegate" which with the influx of television, has become my greatest enemy.
The Bible is very clear about the fact that what I take into my "eyegate" and "eargate", will for the most part, control my life. I choose each day what I put in my body. Like the beautiful apple, I can put good food in my body, or else reach down on the ground and pick up a rotten apple and eat it.
The choices I make in life with my television viewing habits are not good. Other than the weather channel,the sports channel and the major news channels, most television programming is filled with cursing, sex and violence. I have chosen many times, instead of using the remote to change the channel or simply turn it off, to continue viewing the images before me.
It is amazing to me that I will watch something today, that ten years ago, would have completely shocked me. We have slowly let Satan squeeze us into the world's mode, and most of us do not even bother to stop this filth from coming into our lives.
Movies are just as bad. I rarely attend anymore, because of this. Even the previews of coming attractions appeals to our sensual side of our lives, and it is almost as if Satan himself is holding up the "forbidden fruit" much the same way he did with Eve so many years ago in the garden.
And we snap it up like hungry wolves. No wonder God made the statement in Genesis 6:5, "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time." I wonder what God would pen to us today, when he sees how far we have progressed into sin.
Whatever happened to holy living? I rarely hear it preached from the pulpit these days. Am I totally offended by sin in my life, and do I fall before the God of the universe, and cry out to him to deliver me? No, sadly I do not. I find myself so caught up in the "ways of the world" that I simply ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit to "turn that stuff off" and slowly but surely, I become just like the frog in the pan of water, slowly being boiled to death. You know the story. It has been told many times. You want to boil a frog? Don't throw him in the pan of boiling water, because he will quickly jump out. Just put him in a pan of cold water on the stove, and turn up the heat, and he will just sit there and die.
Now being the kind guy that I am, I have never tried the experiment. Sounds a little cruel to the poor froggies. But you get the point. That is exactly where the world has gone into the cesspool of life, and slowly we have been acclimated to sin surrounding us, and engulfing us, and causing us to lower our standards.
So how do I stop this downward spiral in my life? Today I will do two things. First, I will put an empty chair beside the television with a Bible in it. I will ask God to impress upon me, that Jesus is in the chair watching television with me. Remember the Bible says very clearly, "He will never leave you or forsake you." Second, I will email this to three of my closest friends and ask them to hold me accountable. Busy bees that we are, I usually do this with three folks, because usually one of them will ask me on a regular basis how I am doing on this problem.
I find that when I struggle with some sin in my life, that this method works very well, and usually after a few weeks, the sin pattern is broken, and it is not necessary for them to continue to do this.
And the way God works, is that once I have conquered this problem, He will start to work on something else in my life. I am sure glad he does not "dump the truck" on me all at once. But that is the way he operates.
Perhaps you struggle with this or some other thing in your life. Ask God to reveal it to you. Many folks struggle with pornography on the Internet. Many years ago when I came on line, I struggled with "peeking" at this smut. Asking a couple of guys to hold me accountable broke this stronghold, and I never open a questionable site on the Internet.
God wants us all to help each other to live holy lives. "Don't let the world squeeze you into the sin mold."
Forward this site to a friend.
Matthew 28:18-20
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