Within each of us is the potential to do good or evil; we have the freedom to choose whether we do and say what is good and godly or those things that are destructive and evil. The problem is, most do not realize when they are giving in to evil since evil usually rears its ugly head very slowly and subtly.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t recall who told me this, but I heard getting involved in behavior which God would regard as ungodly or sinful can be likened to feeding a terrible monster. The monster pokes and prods at our weaknesses. It is only through us giving in to these temptations that the beast can survive. Each time we give in to the monster\u2019s requests to feed him with ungodly behavior, he increases in strength and size. With each passing day, it becomes increasingly difficult to harness the monster. The more we feed him by giving in to evil, the more the monster tries to dominate our life. Perhaps you have seen some of these monsters? I have seen a few named Hate, Greed and Lust.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, there is a secret to ridding one\u2019s life of such terrible beasts. The secret is to starve them. Without their constant supply of giving in to sinful behavior, the monster quickly begins to weaken and lose its hold on one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, it is possible to have the strength to starve any \u201cmonsters\u201d within whose purpose is to pull us far away from God. To these monsters, God and His word is like a giant sword. The question is, will we reach for the sword, or let it lie untouched?<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Contributed by Melanie Schurr (Copyright 1997 Melanie Schurr) Comments\/feedback welcome. DWwriter@webtv.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Within each of us is the potential to do good or evil; we have the freedom to choose whether we do and say what is good and godly or those things that are destructive and evil. The problem is, most do not realize when they are giving in to evil since evil usually rears its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[249,31,2511,238,4620,4621],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}