Hey Fam,
Trust you are keeping safe and you are doing great.
Today’s episode is titled ‘Cycles’
I am going to share a snippet from today’s podcast
The first line caught my attention in the song Cycles by Jonathan McReynolds. It goes like this: “Didn’t I conquer this last year?” Immediately, I was like “wow, this is me. All the habits I thought I had given up, all the addictions I felt I had overcome that just kept coming back”. You see we tend to associate the word addictions with drugs or alcohol, but it is bigger than that as it covers anything that has control over you from relationships, to material possessions, pornography, masturbation, fornication to stealing, lying etc.
In Inem’s voice note, she talks about how we read the Word, do a Bible plan, and get so charged up in that moment but how all that changes once we close our Bibles. Done with our bibles, we often go back to living our lives the way we have been doing all along, trapped in a vicious cycle of sin and repentance. We are becoming an in-the moment Christian, only answering the name Christians when it is convenient to be one, when it’s easy to put on the mantle of Christianity.
McReynolds does a great job of explaining the danger of being trapped in cycles singing:” See the devil, he learns from your mistakes, even if you don’t. That is how he keeps you in cycles.” He is so right because this is precisely how it goes. Take masturbation/pornography, for example, you do it the one time, and it feels good, then you do it again, and it feels even better which makes you continue doing it, and before you know it, you are trapped in a cycle that fills you with guilt and shame. You know it is wrong, so you repent of the sin, but repentance does not mean the urge disappears and if we are not careful, we get triggered by what we feed our eyes and minds then it is back to square one.
The devil, like McReynolds explains, is very strategic. He has studied our fears and weaknesses, our habits and tendencies and knows how to attack us. He knows that once he places us in the path of those triggers, the temptation to engage will be higher, and because our bodies already know the temporary pleasure that comes from the act, we often fall.
We like to trivialize these triggers, it’s just music, but sister it has raunchy lyrics na, it’s just a soft-core sex scene in a book or movie, it’s just a picture but brother it has you looking for more pictures, it’s just one thought, nothing serious, I am a spirit-filled evidence-in-speaking of tongues Christian, I won’t fall for these but these are triggers and these things seep into our subconscious until we fall prey, yet we refuse to learn from the one mistake but the devil learns what will get us and what won’t, he knows what is the path of least resistance for us, what triggers to place before us that we would succumb to and before we say Jack we are stuck in a pattern of sin going round and round in a cycle held bound by the devil.
Dear Spirit-filled Christian, at this point I will say to you, please flee all appearances of evil. Do not engage in triggers and think you will kabash your way out of it. Do not trust your will power; just run and keep running, do not look back.
Today is a call to reflect on our lives and see the areas that call for amendment, everything you want is in Christ.
Click the link below to listen to the rest and don’t forget to share (sharing is caring):
Don’t forget that Abba loves you so much ❤️❤️❤️
Helen Chels 