Where There's a Will There's a Way // Eliminating Stubborn Sin Once and For All, Part 1

Stubborn sin – the sort that just keeps coming back again and again, no matter how hard we try –is a fact of life for so many. And we have a choice – we can just accept it and its devastating consequences, or we can believe God's Word that where there's a will, there's a way.

THE BIG CON Today we are kicking off a new series of programmes for the next four weeks. It's called "Overcoming Stubborn Sin – Once and For All." And God triggered in my heart, just the other day, when I was sitting talking to a man – but more about him later. Now let me ask you, have you ever had a pen in your pocket and it's leaked? More common for men, I guess – we'll put a pen in our shirt pocket or maybe on the inside pocket of our jacket and then, for one reason or another, the pen leaks and you end up with an ink stain all over your shirt or your jacket. Now that stain, it's called a stubborn stain, isn't it? At least that's how we refer to it where I come from. And the reason we call it a stubborn stain is that, no matter what you wash it with or scrub it with – it doesn't matter what you do to it – it just won't come out. I remember when that happened to one of my favourite jackets, years ago now. I mean, I really liked this jacket; it was soft and comfortable and it looked great. I spent a fortune at the dry cleaners, but it doesn't matter what they tried, the stain didn't come out. And so I simply couldn't wear it out any more. I mean, it would have looked ridiculous. But isn't it funny, these days, when we have a stain like that on our characters, it seems we almost wear it out with pride, or at the very least, we just put up with it. After all, it's a stubborn stain – nothing we can do about it. And that's the attitude of that man that I was telling you about at the beginning of the programme. Here's the thing: he rang the other day and wanted to catch up for a coffee. I agreed and as we sat down in the cafe, we had a bit of small chit-chat and then the crunch issue – the thing he wanted to talk to me about. Well, it was his sin. It was a sin he'd been struggling with all his life. It turned out that his particular Achilles heel was his temper. A lovely man but he has a hot temper and just flies of the handle at the drop of a hat. He was sharing with me what had happened just a few days before. A situation where he'd hurt some people that really mattered to him and the more I listened, the more I got this impression that as far as he was concerned, this was something he was stuck with and the best he could do was to manage the symptoms. There wasn't a single thought in his head of treating the disease. And the reason this shocked me was this man is a Christian with a powerful heart after God and a commitment to God's Word. So I listened without saying too much but the more I turned this conversation over and over in my head, the more disturbing it became. It was like he had a stubborn ink stain on his jacket but he was intent on wearing that same jacket out, day after day, with that stain on it. There was no thought of changing the jacket. Do you see the point? We wouldn't think of wearing an ink stained jacket out to work and yet we'll take who we are - with this great big stubborn stain, smack bang in the middle of our character and our personality, so prominent; so obvious that nobody could ever miss it - and wear it out day after day after day, for a whole life time, resigned to what we think is the fact that there's just nothing we can do about it. Changing the jacket never crosses our mind. Have a listen to this. In the context of what we have just been talking about – stubborn sin – Galatians chapter 3, verse 27: "As many of you as were baptised into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ." And again this: Ephesians chapter 4, verses 22 to 27: "You were taught to put away your former way of life; your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to clothe yourselves