Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 235B — Growing in Sanctification
CALLER: What do I do with doubts that I have, that come and go periodically, about my salvation?
HC: The question is: What do I do when I have doubts about my salvation? They're not there all the time, but they do come.
The probability is that you are undernourished spiritually. You're suffering from spiritual malnutrition. You see, our faith is strengthened by the Word of God. And as you read the Word, and read it confidently, that this is God's Word speaking to me, this is God speaking without error, without exaggeration, without lie of any kind, and He has this to say to me.
And the more you read the Bible, the more you will find assurance for your salvation, because the Bible is one great volume of conversation about the nature of salvation. You see, when you run across a verse like I John 1:9, "If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness," well, okay, have I really turned away from my sins? Do I find in my life that I don't want to sin? Have I talked to God about it? Am I willing to take Him at His Word that He has cleansed me from all unrighteousness? What tremendous assurance, you see.
Now if you, in your life, are coddling up to a sin, if you have a sin in your life (and as Christians we can have this in our life), and you're struggling with it to some degree but you haven't had victory as yet, and it's a besetting sin, now that will give you doubts of your salvation, and rightly so. Rightly so.
If we are born again, we should not be struggling with a besetting sin. When that sin has been around a little while, we'd better get busy and make sure that we have victory over it. Now what we normally do, when we have this besetting sin, and normally it's a sin that we particularly like. It particularly identifies with a certain twist in our old nature that's still left. And it can vary from one person to another. In one case it might be the sin of gossip. In another person it might be the sin of a vicious temper. In another person it might be a sin of selfishness, or of envy, or of evil desire, or whatever. And it just identifies so very well with what we are by nature in our old nature.
And we really enjoy it, to some degree, even though every time we commit that sin, afterwards we just feel miserable, "How did I do it? Why did I do it again?" And we pray, "Oh Lord, forgive me." And how we mean that. Oh, how we mean that. But even as we're praying, we know that tomorrow, or the next day, when temptation arises, we'll commit the sin all over again. Right?
Okay. Now the problem is that we like our sin, and we're not repenting of it. Now God works through repentance. We are praying, "Oh Lord, forgive that sin," hoping, trusting that somehow He will quietly take it out of our life, without us ever having to give it up, because really we're afraid we're going to deprive ourselves of something very nice, if we can't have that sin around any more, and we'd rather not have to take that action.
But God says we have to repent. And so we look at that sin squarely in the eye, and we say, "Now look. That sin has got to go. That sin is open rebellion against my Savior. That sin cannot have a part in my life any more. I'm going to quit feeling sorry for myself, with regard to that sin, and kidding myself that that sin is all that desirable. I'm going to cut it off. And it may mean that I have to cut off a friend or two. It may mean that I have to change my way of life a little bit. It may mean that there are certain magazines I can't read anymore, or certain TV programs I've got to quit looking at. It may mean a lot of different things. But I'm going to do it, and nobody's going to keep me from doing it. And it's going to happen right tonight. I've had it. I want no more of this."
And I begin to call upon God, "Oh Lord, forgive me for my sloppiness in this. Forgive me for my self-pity. Forgive me for my love for this sin. Give me an intense hatred for this. This sin has got to go. Strengthen me as I repent. Strengthen me that I'll keep walking in this path. And under no circumstance do I ever want to do that sin again."
Now ordinarily you will find that that sin begins in your mind. There are certain times in the night or in the day when you start thinking about how nice that particular sin would be. And so the first thing that we do is that we fondle that sin in our minds. We coddle it. We play with it. We love it up in our mind. So far it isn't so bad, you see. We haven't actually committed open sin. We haven't gone out and committed the sin. But we're really developing a real case for it in our mind. And finally it becomes so big that we feel, this is too big for me. And out we go. The sin develops again And then comes the remorse.
Well now the place to stop that sin is right where it hits us in our mind. The next day the thought comes, and we begin to think about that sin, following the old pattern again. And right there we say, "Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. This can't be. Oh Father, forgive me for having it come into my mind again. Strengthen me that this will not happen again." And we immediately go to God's Word, or change the subject in some other way in our minds. This we may not think about anymore. We're not going to let this thing grow and fester in our minds.
CALLER: The best way to get the victory then is that you have to look at it, of course, as sin. And then you have to turn away from it. It's all right then to use the Word of God to strengthen you, and to get victory over it. Right?
HC: The key word is repentance. Now you see, we don't want to dodge that. Don't try to get around. It means that we've got to cut that sin off. It means that if my sin is gossiping, and there's a certain individual in the congregation that every time she calls I find that we're talking about this one and that one, I'm going to have to say to her, the next time she calls, "Now look, today I just don't have time to visit, because I don't want to talk about other people." Now our friend might be real angry with us. But why gossip and encourage her into sin, and encourage yourself into sin? That isn't worth anything at all. It's far better to lose her friendship. If the sin is gossip, you might try this, when the ugly thing about someone else comes up, say, "Now wait a minute. Let's talk about all the good things about this person." The Bible says, "Whatever things are just," and so on, this is what we've got to talk about.
Or let's say it's the sin of drinking or smoking. It means no more of this. We cut it off, if that's what we believe is sin. If it's the sin of anger, it means we have to say, "Now why do I always become angry"? We can sense when we're going to become angry again. We can sense when the hair begins to stand up on the back of our necks, so to speak, and our blood pressure begins to rise. We have to walk out of the room. Or maybe we can't talk to a certain person at a certain time of the day, to avoid this possibility. But we're not going to be angry anymore. We've got to cut it off.
And we must be very ruthless about it, giving ourselves no quarter.
CALLER: Now when I have a sin in my life, that will stop the Spirit from bearing fruit in me, right?
HC: What happens is, when we coddle sin in our life, first of all we feel like a hypocrite when we witness to someone else. It's really hard to be a fair and honest witness to someone else about the love of Christ for those who turn to Him, when we are harboring sin in our own life, and playing with it. It's really hard to say to the other person, "You know, the Bible says that unsaved man is a sinner and he's heading for hell," when we are living in open sin in some way. And so we get totaled out that way by our sin.
Secondly, when we have sin in our life that we're fussing with like this, it's hard to go to the Lord Jesus, to go to the Father, and have open communion with Him, communication with Him, because that sin is always in the background. Somehow we feel dirty because we are not leveling about that sin. We haven't repented of that sin. And if we're going to be of maximum service, we want to have wide open lines of communication with God.
When you get victory over your sin, and you will. You will find that if you mean business, and repent of it, that the desire will go away. Then when you have victory over it, this will be a tremendous encouragement to you, that Christ is indeed your Savior. But it will also mean that then you can go to work on the next sin in your life.
And that is what growing in sanctification is all about.
CALLER: Okay. Thank you very much. And I really appreciate your program
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.