Chapter 8, The Enemy Within (Pt 2)

Your flesh hides the consequences of sin underneath the perceived pleasures of sin, like the worm or the lure hides the fishing hook.

I used to steal candy from 7-11 on almost a daily basis. I'd take orders from my friends at basketball practice, fill my pockets when the cashier wasn't looking, and run back to practice with the spoils.

The pleasure of eating the candy, and even more so the pleasure of my teammates thinking I was cool hid the hooks of a damaged character and an increasing comfort with sin from my view so that I'd chomp down on it day after day after day, that is, until the clerk caught me and told me never to come back. Funny, it's been over 15 years and I still haven't been back to that 7-11.

So, how do you know when sin's hooked you?

You know your hooked when your imagination matches the vision your flesh has of a world free of God's rule, where you can do your own thing, where you can do what you want, where your free from any interference from God, where you're the king or queen of your own life.

In other words, when "your imagination can't turn off the flesh's images of evil, you're hooked" (94).

Remember, your mind guards your soul. It's job is to judge every word, thought, idea, belief, desire as to whether or not it'll please God. When your emotions are working correctly, they "long for and cling to what the mind says is pleasing to God, and are repulsed by what angers him" (95). If it's the other way around in any given situation, you're hooked.

As I sit here, my thought is "I may think about [fill in the blank], but I'd never do it. The thought of sin comes in my mind and I don't entertain it too long. I try to fight it off quickly." This is the problem. A person doesn't do things he or she hasn't already thought about doing--even for a split second.

Be careful! If you're daydreaming about sin, you're only a small step away from being hooked.