What are the Signs of a True Believer in Jesus Christ

Tags

Bible, Christian Internet support ministry, fellow pilgrims, God's Word, groundwire, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, lust, lusts, overcome, overcoming masturbation, overcoming pornography, power, spiritual coach

Dear fellow pilgrims,

The first thing I need to explain before I get to the core reason for writing this post is that I am involved in a Christian Internet support ministry called http://www.Groundwire.net.  It is a ministry which provides the ability for anyone to chat with what we call a “Spiritual Coach”.  This ministry places ads on both Christian and secular media including VH1, MTV, Adult Swim, etc…  The overall purpose of the ministry is to seek and to save the lost for Jesus Christ and to also encourage fellow believers who are having some sort of difficulty in their life.  (If you’re interested in doing evangelism from your own home for 1-2 hours a week, please contact Dan Y at dany@groundwire.net.

I’ve been involved in this ministry for a little over four years now and I can say that it is an incredible blessing to me in many ways.  First of all, I’m blessed just to have the opportunity to share the power of God’s Word with others.  Secondly, I’m blessed in that as I’m prayerfully helping someone on-line, the advice from God’s Word that I’m sharing with them is also ministering to me and blessing me in my faith.  These blessings I attribute to our Holy Spirit who, with prayer, helps us help others by utilizing the true power of God and His Holy Word.

During my four years in this ministry, many people that I’ve chatted with in the past, have e-mailed me to follow-up on things we’ve discussed in our past on-line chats.  I recently had a person (I’ll change his name to “Adam”), contact me about his struggle with p0rnography and ma$turbation (the reason I wrote it like that is because I’m concerned that if I write it the normal way, it may be flagged by this blog site in a way I wouldn’t want it to be flagged).  Anyway, “Adam” and I had chatted recently about his struggles with this and I shared with him about the power of prayer and the power of reading, studying and memorizing God’s Word.  I reassured him that with diligent and prayerful engagement with God’s Word, he would begin to understand how to overcome his sin of lust and self-abuse.  I’d like to share with you one of our most recent interactions so that it might be helpful to others who struggle with these sorts of problems AND to get any input from my readers about how they might have answered Adam.

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From “Adam”:

“Thanks so much for your spiritual warfare prayers I used the first one about 4 days ago and was lust and porn free for about 3 days! It was an amazing feeling. however I feel like total crap now because I messed up today. I will try again but please pray for me. That I can go on for longer this time around.”

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My response:

“Thank you for writing!  I’m so glad to hear from you!

Please remember that our sinful ways did not develop overnight and so those sinful ways sometimes take time to overcome.  Please be careful about trying to overcome completely in your flesh.  Our flesh is no match for Satan, but the power of the Holy Spirit which resides in each true believer, is THE power that will overcome.  Living in the spirit is our long term solution because we learn to live and walk in the spirit through the power of God’s Word.  God’s Word “is living and active and sharper than any double edged sword.  It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

We must know that we have the Holy Spirit who desires for us to live righteously but communicates best through our reading, understanding and memorizing God’s Word.  If you will commit yourself to these things, you will grow in true power to overcome more and more and deeper and deeper sins in your life.

Please be patient and know that God desires us to sometimes battle with HIS weapons rather than the papier-mache weapons that the world or Satan try to hand to us to fight them with.

After falling, upon noticing that you’ve just lost the battle, immediately repent (turn toward God) and confess your sin.  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  Never forget that Jesus died for ALL of your sins, past, present and future almost 1980 years ago on a cross on Calvary.  You are as white as snow.   Our love for Jesus and what He did so completely for us is what our life should be about from that point on; out of love not obligation.  It’s a hard concept for those of us who live in a world that tells us that we must perform in order to earn what we want in our lives.  As true believers in Christ, we are forgiven and have the power to overcome sin.  We just need to deeply understand Gods powerful Word in order to figure out how HE says it must be done.

How is your Bible reading, studying and memorizing going?  Without a dedication to this, we are doomed to fail over and over again, and be convinced by Satan to give up.

Joyous Christmas blessings!”

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The next time I will share the next interaction I had with “Adam”.

Until then fellow pilgrims, always remember, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4

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