So Top 10 Sins and Struggles. This is lesson number 12 in the series. Finishing
up the series tonight. Let's do our countdown as we have for the final time.
Top sins and struggles according to the surveys: laziness, anger, cursing and
gossiping, number 7 pride, neglecting church number six, tied at number five
coping with change, coping with conflict, number four easily discouraged, not just
discouraged, easily discouraged, number three over anxious or worried as a
struggle, number two overly critical, and then number one, I broke it into two, was
the lack of personal discipline. And I said that in this last lesson I would
reveal what issue about the lack of personal discipline did people put down
and the issue was overeating. Overeating. Interesting to note that the number one
personal discipline issue that people noted was food-related, not drugs
or porn or gambling and I would hope that that would be the case. I
mean, it's not like we did a survey of just people on the street, people who are
not members of the church or something like that, but overeating. When
you think about it, food, it's a gift from God. Food is a gift from God.
It's an everyday pleasure and that this gift from God and this everyday pleasure
posed the greatest challenge as far as our little survey is concerned in the
church for our personal discipline. Of course some people have
naturally large frames, others have thyroid issues, others have obesity
as a genetic thing in their family of course. However, the number one sin and
struggle that people mention is overeating or unhealthy eating. So I
think in our survey what we're talking about is a bad habit,
a bad habit that affects the body and soul as well as as other people. I think
that's what we're talking about. Now obviously I'm not qualified to talk
about clinical eating disorders. I mean, there's such a thing as that, I am not, I
can not address that. I don't have the expertise, but I think that the majority
of the people who acknowledged bad eating habits as problems are not
dealing with things at this level. I don't think we're talking about in our
survey clinical eating disorder, I believe simply that the people who
wrote this down are describing a simple bad habit that is causing them problems
in their everyday lives. So with this in mind let's look at this
issue, this overeating issue. First of all, from the perspective of habit, bad
eating habit seems to be the term that kept cropping up, bad eating habits. So
choosing poor nutrition over good, overeating, using food as a reward or a
substitute for something else, this is an ongoing habit, not a good one. Now the
word habit, we're going to talk about habits, comes from a Latin word which
means 'to hold or to live with' and so a habit is a way of acting which because
of repetition becomes a normal part of our lives.
So it's a way of acting, a choice, a decision that we make, a way we choose to
act because of repetition, just becomes a normal part of our life. Don't even think
about it anymore. Now the problem with bad habits is that they usually produce
negative consequences in our lives, otherwise I don't think anybody would
have put down that that's a problem. For example, people who have anger
as a bad habit, they tend to be isolated and lonely because
people have learned to avoid them. People have learned not to tell them the truth
because telling them bad news or bad things as the truth is
going to just, they're gonna blow up. People like that are in constant conflict with
other people and themselves because of what their anger produces: harsh words,
poor decisions, violent acts. So people with the bad habit of just losing their
temper all the time, you know there are consequences that come back from that.
Well, in the same way people with bad eating habits suffer from guilt and they
suffer from guilt continually on an emotional basis and from a host of
health problems as a result of their poor eating choices and patterns. These,
of course, are the obvious and primary problems that these particular bad
habits cause. However, like all bad habits, they also produce other negative
effects that always come with the repetition of destructive behavior. So
it's not just bad eating habits, but all kinds of bad habits create certain
problems for everyone regardless of the bad habit. For example, feelings of
unworthiness. Continually repeating bad habits like, well, outbursts of anger or
eating badly or eating too much make us feel unworthy and when we feel unworthy
we feel that we don't deserve God's love because we're always repeating the
same negative thing. I mean if I don't like me, how can God like me? It's the
thinking, 'I don't like me. I'm fed up with me.
I'm tired of me. I can't even imagine why God likes me. I can't even get... I
can't even muster enough love to love me. Why? Well, because I keep doing this thing
here.' So bad habits have a way of making us not like ourselves and think that
others don't like us either, including God. Other things that bad habits produce;
feelings of discouragement. Bad habits usually lead us to paralysis. We're
paralyzed. We begin to feel helpless because we're continually repeating the
same mistakes. 'I can't say no' or 'I can only say no once out of every five times,
that's a lousy average.' After a while it seems that our habits are stronger than
we are and that's discouraging. Bad habits produce a defensive attitude.
We invent all kinds of methods to avoid dealing with our bad habits so
what do we do? What kind of strategies? Well, we laugh it off. We tell fat jokes.
We'll tell it on ourselves before anyone else will point it out to
us. You don't have to laugh at me,
I'm gonna laugh at me. I'll save you the trouble or we rationalize it. 'It's not so
bad, I see bigger guys around me.' Or we reject those who try to help us by
pointing out our bad habit. It's like, 'Don't go there. Let's not talk about
food. Let's not talk about health, let's talk about something else.
Don't go there.' That's just a defense mechanism. Or we go into denial,
we run away. We deny we have a problem or we become apathetic. 'I don't care I
can't stop.' Smokers go, 'Got to die from something, might as well
die from something I like doing.' I mean that's.. talk about apathy. So anything to
defend our habit and our right to practice it, to practice our bad habit.
Bad habits also produce rebellion. We decide to keep our bad habit even if it
makes us feel bad, even if God forbids it, even if our conscience, our health, our
family, our friends are negatively affected by it, doesn't matter, we're
familiar with our bad habit and the pleasure and power or comfort it brings
us outweighs the negative consequences. I'll go back to the smokers, 'You
know what? I don't care what anybody says this is...' I remember myself
saying this, 'This is my only pleasure. This is the only thing I like to do. I
don't like doing all that other stuff. I like doing this better than I
like eating.' I remember saying that to somebody. 'I eat in order to get to the
cigarette after the meal.' And anybody who's been a smoker here understands
exactly what I'm saying. So in the end we just say, 'Hey, don't even talk
to me about it. I'm sticking it out.' Now the strategy to overcome the bad habit
of poor eating is essentially the same as the strategy to overcome any bad
habit. It isn't a particular strategy, the same strategy works for all the habits,
because all the habits have common denominators. There may be some
details that change from situation to situation, but the approach
in principle is virtually the same for everything. So how do we break the cycle
of bad habits including poor eating habits?
Number one, you've got to want to. You've got to want to. You have to want. The Hebrew writer
put it this way, "He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a
rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." To finish out the phrase, Hebrews
11:6. In other words, you must want to believe
for faith to be formed in you. No one can force you to believe. Several
years ago a man, not in this congregation, called me about his son. He wanted to
know what he could do to make his son give up the homosexual lifestyle. His son
came out as gay. 'This is what he wanted to do. He was tired of hiding it.
I'm gay, that's what I am. This is I'm gonna live, if you don't like it, too bad.'
And the father was a good Christian man
and he called me up and he wanted to talk and so he talked for a while and in
the end I told him that nothing could be done until the young man wanted to come
out of this lifestyle, until he wanted to come out of this sinful lifestyle, the
sinful sexual habit. You couldn't do anything. No amount of preaching or
pressure or nagging can make somebody give up a bad habit if they don't want
to. Now someone may ask, 'Well, how does a person develop a desire to break a bad
habit?' Well, there's no common rule here, but from experience I can share with you
some things that motivate a person to want to break a bad habit whether it's
poor food consumption or a bad temper or anything else. So some motivators to help
you want to break the habit. Truth. Truth. The biggest problem with homosexuality
in this country is that we're no longer allowed to tell the truth about it. We
can't say the truth. Now to say the truth about it will get you arrested,
will get you sued. Some states trying to pass the Defense of Marriage
thing or to protect Christians from not having to... like a church not having to
hire a gay minister or so on and so forth. They tried to pass that law in
Georgia, did you see what happened? 50 biggest corporations in America said we
will cut you off, we'll tamp you down, we'll ruin you. We
won't make movies about you, we'll ridicule you. Exactly what were they
trying to do? Well, they were just trying to protect the religious freedom of
individuals to be Christians and to practice their faith, to actually say
that you believe that a man and a woman, this is God's natural plan for
marriage, to say that is now considered, 'You're prejudiced, you're a
homophobe, you're evil.' The destructive thing about that is that it
doesn't permit anyone to stand up and tell the truth about it.
When you know the truth about what you are doing and that it is wrong, this may
be the spark that gets you going, that makes you want to change. Sometimes we
don't let go because we're not sure that what we're doing is wrong
or dangerous or hurtful to ourselves or other people or in disobedience to God.
Gay groups want to make sure that nobody tells them that they are wrong, that this
is a sin. They've been putting pressure on churches now to accept gay
ministers, openly gay, openly practicing ministers and there's nobody left to say,
'This is wrong.' So if we can be convinced that the habit is truly a bad one, it's a
motivator to want to break it. Love. Oh, let me say one other little thing about
that, this is why parents and family and friends must not compromise with what's
right when dealing with someone they love who has a bad habit. People say to
me, 'What do I do? My son he says he's gay, blah blah blah, you know I'll never see him
again,' and I said because he thinks he's gay because he has same-sex attraction
doesn't mean that you can't talk to him, doesn't mean that if he's smart in
mathematics you have to reject his gift in mathematics, you understand
what I'm saying? You have to be able to say to your son, 'This over here, this is
unacceptable. This is wrong because God...' and so on and so forth. You have
to be able to continue to say what is wrong and 'No, you can't bring your
boyfriend home. No, that's wrong and no your boyfriend can't sleep over here and
no I won't attend your gay rally. You want to come over for your mom's
birthday? Sure, come on over for your mom's birthday. Want to come over for
Thanksgiving? We're having Thanksgiving, the family's together. You're coming?
Great! Come! You're our son, we love you. Thanksgiving's for the family, you're part
of the family. Yeah, we don't agree on that particular thing. We think that
thing is wrong, but we're not saying that everything is wrong in your life, just
this thing is wrong.' But what do people do? Well, they slouch their way
into compromise. 'Well, bring your... OK, you can bring your boyfriend over.
We'll try to be nice to him.' So truth is important. Truth is
important. Love is important because love is a great motivator. Sometimes you don't
care about the effects of your bad habit on yourself, but you care about how it
affects other people. Some people you know, they give up booze because, not
because it's ruining themselves, but because they see the effect that
it's having on their wife or their husband or their children. Some quit
tobacco because they want to give a good example to their children. 'I'm smoking
blah blah blah and down deep inside I know that's wrong, but I don't want my
kid to start smoking. I don't want to give him that example, so I'll sacrifice.'
Love. I'll sacrifice that habit, not because I want to, but because I love
my kid, and for him, I'll do it for him. Still others will begin dealing
seriously with common sense diet and exercise when they are encouraged in
love to do so. So those who refuse to break bad habits, even with the pleadings
of their loved ones, really love their bad habits
more than they love their loved ones. And then pain is also a great motivator.
Sometimes your bad habit turns around and bites you. You get sick because of it
You hurt somebody because of it. You get in trouble because of it.
You lose your job, your reputation, your money, your family, because of it or you just
get tired of feeling guilty all the time. Some people they have to hit
bottom like the Prodigal Son before they start dealing with their problems.
I remember one, again not anyone here, I remember one obese, he was obese, this
brother, was shocked into better eating when his scale said to him, 'you weigh 329
pounds', because he always thought he was like a 200-pound guy. 'Yeah, two-forty, 240.
I'm 240. I'm a big guy. What do you want? Big guys, we've got to eat you
know. I'm 240. Played ball. I'm 240. He kept going around, 'I'm 240 I'm 240,' and he ate
like a horse, you know what I'm saying? And what happened? One day he actually
got on the scale to see if he was still 240 and he was 329 and the fact that the
scale went past the 300, that's the thing that [slapping noise] because lots of people are 220, 215,
he figured, 'I'm with those guys,' but when the needle went past 300, 300
pounds and this was not a guy who was like 6 foot 7, big huge man, guy
was shorter than I am.
Yeah, what a shock. So people who ignore the pain and they
go on are truly ignorant and rebellious in God's eyes and they deserve the
condemnation that they're going to get.
So you have to want to, right? You have to want to. Another step to overcome the bad
habit, you have to acknowledge it. If for whatever reason you are move
to look for a way out, a way to break your bad habit, the next step is to
acknowledge it. The hardest thing to do is to acknowledge that we have a bad
habit, not just a habit, but a bad one. It's very difficult to admit that you
are a wasteful gambler. It's hard to admit. 'What do you mean I'm a wasteful...?
I like to play a little. I buy a little ticket here. I go to the
casino. Yeah, I never... Fifty bucks.
I bring fifty bucks, that's it.' Yeah, so you go waste fifty bucks, because
the odds are what thousand to one that you win when you buy your
lottery ticket every week? What are the odds, 100 million to one that you win? I
think I call that a waste. If you're going to gamble, at least go to the
horse race, there are only seven horses. I mean, you've got one
out of seven you can win you know? Be smart or hey... To admit, you know what I
just realized? I'm impure sexually. Every chance I get to see something a little
racy, a commercial, an ad to click on something, whoa you see that
all the time. If you're on the internet, right, guys? You're on the
internet, you're just minding your own business, you're reading the paper, but
there's an ad in the paper that says 50 women who are nearly naked
and you go, 'Wow.' Like is that like news just because it's in the newspaper?
No, that's clickbait. That's to get you to go look at something and hopefully we'll
force you to go look at something, not force you, but draw you into... You know
pornography, people consume pornography, they don't start with
hardcore pornography, they start with little gentle things,
clickbait, and they move themselves into...
It's very hard to be able to say to oneself, 'You know what? I'm just not pure.
Christianity demands that I be holy and I'm not. I'm sexually impure.' It's hard to
admit that. Or you lack self-control with food. It's not that I... This fellow,
he used to say, he used to have a little saying that would excuse
his indulgences. He'd say, 'Well, you know everybody knows I have a good fork.
Everybody knows I had a good fork. Like he's a gourmet, but three plates of
spaghetti later, that's not a good fork, that's a shovel.
You understand what I'm saying? Why? Because he couldn't say to himself, 'I
have a bad habit. I do not control myself when it comes to food. I can't
just stop.' It's hard to say to yourself, 'I'm a gossip. I love to talk about other
people to other people.' It's hard to admit that or that you're critical or
you're lazy or you use your bad temper to get your way; it's hard to acknowledge
that. It's difficult because you know that when you admit fault you can no
longer participate in it without guilt anymore. Going back to the guy
who says, 'I'm not pure sexually,' the minute you acknowledge that and 'I need
to be,' the minute you acknowledge that, you can't go back to clicking anymore.
You can't go back to clicking anymore without guilt, without not even thinking
about it, because you've already said, 'You know what? That's not OK. I need to stop doing that.'
It's difficult because the moment you admit the bad habit and try to leave it,
you must anticipate a life without a habit that you enjoyed and let's face it
Jesus himself said we love our sins. "The light came into the world," and what did
man do? Did he come to the light? Jesus said, 'No, he didn't come to the light.' Why?
Because he loved the darkness. We love our sins, John 3:19. So we'd rather defend
our sins and keep them than abandoned them, so the best way to neutralize the
power that a bad habit has over us is to shine the light of truth on it by
acknowledging exactly what it is and how it is hurting us. 'I am careless with my
health and body in the way that I eat. I need to be more careful.' That's
acknowledgment. Next step, share the problem with somebody else. We
confess our sins to God, but in order to stay away from them we need help from
other people. Sharing our burden with someone else; a spouse, another
Christian, a trusted friend or family member, or a counselor, whatever, this
creates in us the thing we need to deal with our bad habit. It humbles us. When I
tell somebody else that I am struggling with this thing; my wife, she
is my prayer partner, she's my confidant, I tell her, but it's
very humbling to acknowledge something nasty about yourself or weak about
yourself. It humbles us and in so doing it prepares our souls for God's
blessings. Why? Because God lifts up the humble and He brings down the proud. Too
proud to admit your fault? God's not going help you. You ready to humble
yourself and admit your fault? God will raise you up. He won't raise you up, He
won't raise you up in pride, He'll raise you up in strength.
He'll raise you up in the ability to deal with your whatever you're dealing
with. And it also strengthens our bond with people who can encourage and
support us through the times that we withdraw from our bad habit.
Sharing our problem with another cuts it in half, makes it manageable. Number four,
finally, let God heal. You let him heal you. In the end, only God can heal our
wounds and make us whole again. We desire to break the habit, we
confess it to God in ourselves, we share it with others for support, but only God
can remove the ache and the sinful desire that is at the root of evil. Only
God can do that. The thought that was in my head many many years ago when I
realized, I acknowledged, I cannot continue smoking and be a Christian, I
can't do both. I've got to choose. And funny the thing, and I still remember it in my
mind, the other thing that came into my mind was this a kind of a sentence that
said, 'Wow you're going to let smoking knock you out?
What a punk you are. Smoking? This is it, you're giving up Christ for smoking? What a punk you are.'
Let God heal you. Let God into that place that's going to hurt, because when we
give up a bad habit, the hard part is thinking, 'I'm never gonna have that again.
I can't do that anymore.' Because we have the habit because we
liked it, right? And if I give it up that means it's going to hurt, there's going to be
pain. So how does God help us? How does He heal us? Well, through His
word. In Matthew eight it says, "Lord...speak only Your word and my servant
will be healed." The Centurion that came to Jesus to heal his servant.
Remember he said, 'I'm not I'm not worthy for you to come into my house.
Just speak the word,' he says, 'my servant be healed.'
God's word sheds the light of truth on our bad habits, it guides us into the
right conduct and living, it comforts our hearts and it convicts our
consciences. His word fills the void left by the elimination of the bad habit. If
not replaced, if not, if we don't put the word in there, then it'll only be
replaced by other bad habits, depression, anxiety. I always go back to smoking,
because I really knew about that when that was a really bad habit that I had
and how many people do you know? 'I gave up smoking but I gained 60 pounds.' Why?
Well, you just traded the bad habit of smoking for bad eating habits. I
remember when I quit smoking, man I'd sit there with a bucket of ice cream
watching TV. Yeah, I'm feeling good. I quit smoking. I've just taken in a
thousand calories. What we do to ourselves. This is why regular worship
for example and Bible study and regular Bible reading, all this stuff leads to a
lifestyle that contains less and less bad habits. How else does He heal us?
Through the Holy Spirit. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit what? The Comforter. Paul
tells us that we overcome the sin in our lives through the power of the Holy
Spirit, Romans 8:13. And the Spirit of God works directly with our spirit to
strengthen us in dealing with our bad habits. You could say that the word shows
us our faults and the Holy Spirit gives us the strength to do what the word
requires of us. Well, what is it again? The fruit of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of
the Holy Spirit is what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control. Notice
God never says, 'OK, you need to start developing some self-control.' No, He said
the gift of the Spirit is self-control. He engineers self-control, true
self-control in your heart, in your life. He also heals us through people. If you
want to let go bad habits you need to be with people who are themselves filled
with the Holy Spirit. You need to be with people who will confront you with the
word. You need to be with people who have overcome the bad habit that you're trying to overcome.
You need to be with people who will not encourage you in the bad
habit. Best guy to help you give up smoking is a guy who himself gave up
smoking. If you want to give up smoking, stop hanging around with the guy who's
still puffing away. You can't get rid of a bad habit in a vacuum, you need to draw
close to God so that He can heal you through His word and His Spirit and the
love of His people. Well, obviously this lesson is a
summarized approach to a serious issue that a lot of people in this very
congregation face and I want you to realize that I don't mean to trivialize
this particular problem by simply devoting 30 or so minutes to discussing
it. I mean obviously people go for many many weeks and months into
therapy to deal with just eating issues. And few issues are more complex than how
we deal with food in our lives. I mean it's a necessity and it's all around us
so there's no quick and easy fix, especially if you remember the church,
what is it that accompanies everything we do? Well food. The ladies are getting
together to do a little thing and there'll be a snack. The heart moms are
getting together, what are they gonna do? They're going to cook and they're going to
serve the young women what? Food. The men are getting together at the building to
do some jobs, but first what will they do? Eat. We're having a fellowship after
services what are we going to do? Well, we're gonna eat. I mean we're the eatingest
church. So it's not easy, if you're dealing with food, it's all around you
all the time. 'Let's go to the restaurant. I'll meet you. I'll meet you at Panera
Bread. Who can say no? Oh, I'll have the pick two. I'll have just that
half of sandwich and I'll have just the cup of soup and I'll have a diet cola
and two of those scones over there, need two of those babies... Bring those over.
Right? So I get it. It's impossible. It just surrounds us all the time. People
give us gifts at Christmas. You know how much food the ministers get? People bring us
baskets of food and we eat it happily. So I'm not trivializing it, it's
a hard thing, but what I've given you are the steps to begin the
process of change. There are things which are in the reach of every
individual and things which require little or no
expense or equipment or time. Alright, one other thing. Bad habits are visible
on the outside, but their roots are all within, within the individual and the
steps that I've given you are changes that you can make to the inner person
which will ultimately bear fruit in the outer person. I've only spoken of one bad
habit, but whatever your bad habit, the road to healing is always the same. You
have to want to overcome it. You need to acknowledge to yourself and others what
it really is and you really have what it really is. You need to find help because
obviously by yourself you've not been able to handle it and you must let God
heal the source and fill the void left by the habit that you have abandoned. And
by the way, I've used that word abandoned, you have to abandon, meaning I never
going back, not 'Well, I'll try for a little while,
I'll taper down.' Latest studies show, right, cold turkey,
want to quit smoking? Just stop. This business, 'Well, I'll smoke ten today, next
week five, then for a month three and then... Right? Yeah, it's like you're
injecting yourself. Abandon. Abandon. So please know that to break bad habits
you have to take the first step, but once that is done your brothers and sisters
in Christ are here to help you follow through. God bless you as you deal with all
the bad habits that Satan has put in this world. Alright, that's the end of our
course. Thank you very much for your attention. I will remind the audience
that it is 7:59 and 15 seconds.