Maybe you’ve experienced that things have often gone badly - you have fallen in sin again and again and it seems as if there is just no progress. You have tried everything, but nothing works. When you hear the word of God spoken powerfully and full of the Holy Spirit, you get some hope again, but your hope disappears as soon as you are back in your everyday life.
In fact, things have been going up and down like this for a very long time, so you have started to think that it will probably just continue in the same way for the rest of your life. All your experiences tell you that it will never succeed for you to stop sinning!
You need faith
Therefore you need faith!
Faith goes right against our human understanding. To our human reasoning, faith is not “logical” at all. That is why it is faith. Faith means holding on to God’s Word and His promises! Like the word in Philippians 1:6 where we read: “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” Faith means being deaf and blind to all thoughts of unbelief. Faith is a high wall between past experiences and today.
You have probably tried before to get faith that you will be able to overcome all sin, and maybe you have lost that faith again. But you need to try again and again! To get faith you need to ask God for it and then you need to decide to believe what He says in His Word. Then you need to hold on to this faith every single day. Forget what is behind, and fight to overcome. Hold on to faith! Hold on! Day after day, and don’t worry about tomorrow!
If you hold on to this, the day will soon come when you look back and discover that you are living an overcoming life and that it has become easier and more natural to overcome each day.
No reason to give up
But what if later on you have a bad day and fall again? Is everything hopeless now? Has everything been for nothing? Have you now gone back to living in sin? Do you now have reason to be discouraged and to give up?
No! Believe that God will forgive your sins! Don’t stay down for a single second, but jump up again, believe in what God has promised, and hold on to it! In 2 Timothy 1:7 it is written that God did not give us the spirit of discouragement, so you never have to be in that spirit! Use your fall as a reason to hate sin even more – to become even better prepared for next time! It is quite natural to fall for someone who is learning to walk, but it shouldn’t stay like that!
It is extremely important to never give up! It shall succeed!