Appetite or Conviction?

You know when something isn’t right. You can hear that voice inside you saying that this may not be a good idea. But you find your desires wanting what is in front of you – they scream at you to indulge yourself. Go on… what harm can it do? Just once? Did God actually say it was a sin…?

Lets role back to Genesis 3. The serpent isn’t stupid; in fact he is crafty and knows how to play the game of desire and he does this through advertising and appealing to mans appetite. He makes death look beautiful and disobedience sexy. He plays on the appetite of man and woman to serve themselves and break covenant with God. Through listening to their appetites instead of the conviction of Gods word, they found themselves naked and ashamed. Sin lies and reaps devastation.

But isn’t our appetite tasty? Don’t we love the pull of lust and the forbidden fruit? There is always that temptation to go for what will please our desires especially if they are screaming at us to give it a go.

Imagine if you had a choice between watching or ignoring a film which you know contains sex scenes that will cause you to stumble. The choice seems obvious. But your appetite for seeing it and your desires bring up excuses –

1. I will watch it in order to engage with themes and topics for Gospel outreach.
2. I will fast forward through the sex scenes
3. I will only watch it once and maybe in secret so no one knows.
4. Maybe it won’t affect me much…just this once.

But your convictions scream at you not to watch it. Not to gratify the desires of the flesh. To flee from temptation. Your conviction knows that this may lead you into sin and cause you to stumble and cause you heartache. The Holy Spirit is placing convictions on your heart. But who will you listen to? Yourself or God?

I was challenged about this at Staff Orientation and Forum and how important it is to never go with appetite but always go with conviction. This isn’t just related to movies with sex scenes, but also shopping, internet porn, gossip, books, what you do, late nights etc… and although I am convinced that you cannot do this alone, but only through the Holy Spirit – by walking in the Spirit as Paul describes in Galatians 5. However you do have a responsibility as to whether you will listen and act with the conviction presented to you or go with your appealing appetite. Which is better?

Schaeffer on prayer and active passivity

Francis Schaeffer is an amazing man, who thinks deeply and asks many questions. I am currently half way through reading about his life story and I stumbled across a quote that really struck me:

If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that all that the Bible teaches concerning prayer and the Holy Spirit were removed (not as a liberal would remove it, by misinterpretation, but really removed) what difference would it make in practice from the way we are functioning today? The simple tragic fact is that in much of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ–the evangelical church–there would be no difference whatsoever. We function as though the supernatural were not there. -

Francis A. Schaeffer (True Spirituality).

Shaeffer makes the point that we rely on "human talent, energy and clever ideas".

How much of this would make a difference to your life? If tomorrow, God took away prayer and the Holy Spirit, would there be much difference in your life tomorrow as today? How much do we rely on ourselves rather then Jesus? Its difficult when we get our daily bread from Tescos and our temptations are in forms of chocolate ice cream.

Schaeffer says we need to approach situations with "active passivity". There is no excuse to not work for the Lord with all your strength and ability - it should be a joy. There is no room for idleness - so we are active and yet we are passive because we should be doing everything through Jesus, relying on Him, praising Him and realising that He does the work and we cant do anything without Him.

Maybe we need to step back and think with Shaeffer. Would tomorrow be different too today if God took away prayer and the Holy Spirit? Whom do I really rely on every day for everything - little or huge?

Keep in step!

We are not on a short sprint to heaven, but a lifelong marathon. The Holy Spirit is like a champion runner who draws alongside us at the beginning of the race (John 14:15–27) and promises us that we will make it to the end (Ephesians 1:13–14). He will help, challenge and encourage us. There will be times when we lean on him. There will be times when he pushes us forward. But the whole time we must keep in step with him.

~ Krish Kandiah (Fresh)