Just like you do spring cleaning to get rid of excesses and organize yourself and your life, we are encouraged in the scriptures to frequently examine ourselves, taking inventory of the motives and desires from which we take action, so that we may find ourselves glorifying God and not anything else. This study will help you take inventory of yourself in light of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit you’ve been given as a promise to be redeemed in the last day if you remain faithful.
2 Corinthians
13:5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the
faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless,
of course, you fail the test?
In the Gospels,
particularly John's Gospel, we find a series of events in Jesus’ life about contrasts:
belief and unbelief, light and darkness, life and death, salvation and
judgment, God and Satan. Wherever Jesus
went, controversy accompanied him. He
comes to us, and we similarly have to make a choice about everything we
experience as well, and the choice is stark: follow our own willful way, which
is deadly; or follow Christ on the high road to abundant life. There are fruits that accompany a successful
transformation as we walk the narrow path:
Galatians
5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit
is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control. Against such things there is no law.
In direct contrast to
these fruits, there are sins that choke our growth. Let us first reflect on the
sins that prevent our full commitment to Jesus. These seven deadly sins are pride, covetousness,
lust, anger, gluttony, envy and laziness. We call them “deadly”, since a continuous
walk in them will lead you to your second death (Revelation
2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8). These
sins are shown in contrast to the fruit of the Spirit.
Assignment 1: Using your Bible Concordance, look up as
many verses as you can that deal with each sin and each fruit mentioned. Write
the ones that spoke the clearest to you about the transformation you must
undergo to change that particular sin into fruit in your daily walk with Jesus
in each column below.
This verse will become your daily encouragement to help you remember how you must let the Spirit transform you so that sin no longer masters you:
Genesis
4:7 If you do what is right, will
you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at
your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
Mastering sin has to do with developing healthy, spiritual habits that will replace and eventually end the control that particular sin has over your life. Your discipling/mentoring sessions are spiritual checkups where you should track the progress, or regress of this spiritual conditioning. Your older brother or sister in the faith helps you trace this progress and identify healthy habits to edge out the mastery of the sin in your life.
Let’s look at the chart:
Vice/Sin
|
Contrast
|
Brief
description
|
Pride |
Humility |
Seeing
ourselves as we are and not comparing ourselves to others is humility. Pride
and vanity are competitive. If someone else's pride really bothers
you, you have a lot of pride. |
Avarice/Greed |
Generosity/
|
This
is about more than money. Generosity means letting others get the credit or
praise. It is giving without having expectations of the other person. Greed
wants to get its "fair share" or a bit more. Generosity doesn’t
keep count. |
Envy |
Love |
"Love
is patient, love is kind…" (1 Co. 13:4-13) Love actively seeks
the good of others for their sake. Envy resents the good others receive or
even might receive. Envy is almost indistinguishable from pride at times. |
Wrath/Anger |
Kindness |
Kindness
means taking the tender approach, with patience and compassion. Anger is
often our first reaction to the problems of others. Impatience with the
faults of others is related to this. Anger stems from a desire to have
fairness (justice) to the extreme of vengeance. |
|
Lust |
Self-control |
Self-control
and self-mastery prevent pleasure from killing the soul by suffocation.
Legitimate pleasures are controlled in the same way an athlete's muscles are:
for maximum efficiency without damage. Lust is the self-destructive drive for
pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used
well, but they can easily go out of control. |
Gluttony |
Temperance /Balance |
Temperance
accepts the natural limits of pleasures and preserves this natural
balance. Don’t be mistaken – gluttony
does not pertain only to food, but to entertainment and other legitimate
goods, and even the company of others (attention). You can struggle with the
sin of gluttony and still have a “perfect” body. The sin of gluttony is
closely related to the sins of greed and lust. |
Sloth |
Zeal/ |
Zeal
is the energetic response of the disciple’s heart to God's commands. The
other sins work together to deaden the spiritual senses so we first become
slow to respond to God and then drift completely into the sleep of
complacency. |
All these sins take
away joy (Galatians 4:15 What has
happened to all your joy?), since they are largely based on
self-fulfillment, competition and comparison to others. This manipulative
mode puts a destructive spin on all your relationships. Intimacy is
compromised and self-service blinds you to your true needs in Jesus.
To get back on track
and be builders of relationships, the focus has to get off you
and onto what you can bring into every relationship you have. This ministry
mode centers on the fact that Jesus provides you with everything you
need and lets you be transparent in your relationships. Transparency
leads to vulnerability, which leads to meekness (Matthew 5:5 Blessed are the meek, for they
will inherit the earth.) Meekness, or power under control, (Self-control)
is a desirable fruit of the spirit that shows mastery over sins in your life.
It is a strength and gift of the spirit (2 Timothy
1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of
power, of love and of self-discipline.)
If you cannot be
transparent, you will never learn meekness, since you will not be able to
endure the transformation process we speak of here, let alone begin a spiritual
checkup of yourself. Transparency can
be maintained by:
1- Becoming aware of the fruit of the sin in your life
a.
Conviction from
Scriptures
b.
Self-awareness
c.
Through advice from
others
2- Confessing your awareness to your mentor
3- Seeking advice on how to eliminate the pattern of
thinking that leads to sin (Remember it begins in the mind: James 1:13-15)
4- Reporting on your progress of these things
voluntarily
5- Sensitizing yourself (becoming more sensitive) to the
slightest presence on any kind of thinking or behavior that will produce in you
sinful fruit.
Assignment 2: Answer the following questions focusing on your
need to be transparent before God and yourself. Remember, you may think you
don’t have a problem with each of these sins listed, but there is a good chance
that you may be blinded to it. Pray to the Lord to reveal in your heart what
you must change as David did (Psalm 139,
esp. v. 23, 24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my
anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the
way everlasting.)
1- In what ways am I
proud?
2- Are my ambitions godly
or selfish?
3- What does sex mean to
me?
4- Anger is destructive (James 1:20 …for man's anger does not bring
about the righteous life that God desires.): What makes me angry? Have
I repented and asked the forgiveness of the one against whom I vented my
wrath?
5- In what areas of my
life am I a victim of addictive behaviors?
6- Have I got professional
jealousies, or jealousies in relationships?
7- Workaholism is an
immoderate love of work; laziness is an unreasonable love of idleness: towards
which of these do I have a tendency?
Imagine
Jesus sitting next to you: talk to him about your specific commitment to grow
and change in one or more of these areas. If you find that you have several
areas to work on, you may be overwhelmed. If this is the case, pray unceasingly
to the Lord to work on these areas, and focus your energy on the areas that are
most destructive in your life. He can and will answer your prayer and make you
aware of the blessings you have that enables you to change with the Spirit’s
help. Remember, He has given you a new heart! (Ezekiel
11:19; 36:26) Always remember, however, that He accepts you even
before you change. He loves you towards
change, growth, and maturity. Let Him
disciple you through your loving brothers and sisters so that you may be a
reflection of His glory! Develop with
your discipler an individualized plan for glorification. Include
in it the specific behaviors you need to change and the spiritual habits you
will use to replace the sinful ones that currently master you.
In
order to assure your repentance is real, study out what godly sorrow and
worldly sorrow mean from this scripture:
10 Godly sorrow brings
repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow
brings death. Following
are the fruit of godly sorrow
11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what
earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm,
what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point
you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.
Assignment
3: Look up each of the fruit of
godly sorrow in a dictionary to understand the meaning of each of the words the
Apostle Paul uses here to describe what the right attitude should be about
repentance.