Getting Free from Besetting Sin

There are only two things you can do at any given time: obey God or disobey Him. Obeying God and confessing your sin when you disobey is called walking in the light: as soon as you get in the darkness, you confess your sin and get back in the light.

My book How to Be Free: More Essays on Christian Living is about how to be free from besetting sins and obey God. It covers different topics like depression, worry, anger, low self-esteem, guilt, gossip, lying, a critical spirit, complaining, etc. It also talks about how to walk in the light. The book is available at ccmbooks.org/bookstore and Amazon.

Sins do not travel in singles. If you have unconfessed sin, it sets you up for more sin. If you get into the habit of confessing sin, you will not have to go through the ins and outs of obedience and confession so much. Take care of sin when it occurs. Do not wait.

It is possible to walk in the light, which makes it easy to obey God. When you are walking in the light, you can rejoice always, you can be anxious for nothing, and you can give thanks in everything. You do not have to be addicted to sin.

The best preventative for sin is being in the Word daily and choosing to do what it says. If you are not reading your Bible daily, I encourage you to join the To the Word! Bible Reading Challenge. You can find all the details at TotheWord.com. Do not worry that the plan has already started – just jump in with today’s reading, and catch what you've missed when the plan starts up again in September.

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Why Is Obedience So Hard?

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In the first thirteen verses of John 3, Nicodemus did not understand what Jesus was talking about. It was nonsense to him. When Jesus said verse fourteen to him, Nicodemus finally understood Jesus. Here it is: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up…” (John 3:14). The reason it made sense to Nicodemus was because he knew of the event that Jesus spoke of. People who had been bitten by a serpent could look at the bronze snake and did not die. Nicodemus knew the Bible story. Here it is: “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyo

Getting Old

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Roots by the River

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