change our affections

"To come to Jesus is to taste and see that he is good and to find in him the end of all your desires. To believe in Jesus is to experience an eternal pleasure that far outweighs and outlasts the temporal pleasures of this world." David Platt

Why is it that some are able to avoid drinking, drugs, immorality, bad language, lying, pride, materialism, immodesty etc.? Is it because they have more self-control? Is it because they are able to follow the Christian list of do's and don'ts more efficiently? Is it because they've been raised to avoid everything on the DONT list? 

Sometimes we approach these things the wrong way. We try to get our young people to stop partying/drinking/clubbing because its wrong and not glorifying to God. We try to approach these issues in this generation by starting on the outside and pushing it to the inside. I guess what I mean by this is, we tell each other, "thats sinful, don't do it." And then we expect a change of heart from a head of knowledge - from the knowledge or what is right and what is wrong.

Is this really going to work? I don't think so.

So whats the right way to approach these things? How do we get the point across that getting drunk, sexual immortality, immodesty, materialism, pride, lust, greed, profanity, pornography and the list goes on... how do we approach sin in our lives? We need to tackle it from the inside and pray that a changed HEART will lead to changed ACTIONS.

A heart that desires JESUS cannot desire the ways of the world. PERIOD.

There is no sitting on the fence, dipping our toes in the waters of sin. If you TRULY desire Jesus and have a true and living relationship with Him, your heart must have changed and be continually changing. Im not saying that sin and the ways of the world will stop being tempting - no, but certainly they will lose their appeal. We may be tempted, we will face trials and challenges and we will certainly never be perfect. But your heart will find itself FULLY 100% SATISFIED by Jesus Christ. You won't have a hunger for anything else. 

We need to teach people about Jesus. We need to pray for their hearts to be broken, so that might realize that they are empty and needing something... someone... to fill them. Jesus. We can't shove a list of rights and wrongs in their faces, a list of what you can do, what you can maybe get away with and what you definitely can't do. There is NO list. All there is is two options: a heart that is for Christ, and a heart that is for the world.

We need to pray that people's hearts are truly touched by the gospel, that they will realize that Jesus is enough. When they do - their hearts will change. The ways of this world, the things we once loved, the things we once wanted WILL become the things we hate. Jesus will become all we want. We need to continually be in the word, learning more and more about Jesus and who HE is. You cannot mirror Jesus as we are called to, unless you pick up your cross and surrender your life. Surrender yourself.

We need to TRUST CHRIST to CHANGE our AFFECTIONS 

rather than working so hard to change our actions.