Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

Do you ever feel stuck in the same repeating pattern of sin? You're not alone. Pastor Mike Fabarez takes a moment to answer an important question from a listener about resisting sin's magnetic draw today on Focal Point.

Well, glad you could join us for another edition of Ask Pastor Mike here on Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Droue. You know, every week we clear the schedule to sit down one on one with our teacher Mike Fabarez to get answers to the questions you're asking.

Now, if you'd like to ask a question of your own, you can post it online at focalpointradio.org/connect or sign into our Facebook or Twitter sites.

Right now, let's join Pastor Mike and Focal Point executive director Jay Wurton inside the Pastor Study.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Dave.

Speaker 3

Pastor Mike, today's listener question is immensely practical.

I trust he writes, how can I overcome sin in my life? Maybe you could talk a little bit about what our relationship to sin is as we become Christians and what victory we can see immediately and maybe ongoing.

Speaker 4

Yeah, and I feel like we talk about this so much, but it's important because there's been such an abuse in terms of people saying, you become a Christian, your life just remains the same.

In other words, I can be a follower of Christ but not really be following Christ.

Speaker 2

And so we preach, preach a lot.

Speaker 4

In my sermons, I try to point out that clearly your relationship with sin changes as a Christian.

First, John is obviously such a straightforward, forthright indictment of those who say, "Well, I follow God, but, you know, my life is not changed and I still live in sin."

That book is trying to make a significant point.

Speaker 2

Very clear that can never happen.

Speaker 4

Your relationship with sin is going to change. But of course, even as the first chapter of 1 John says, it doesn't mean we're sinless people. We still stumble; to put it in James's words, we all stumble in many ways. So there's no sinlessness. Sometimes people look at a sin and they go, "Man, I just keep saying things I shouldn't say at work," or "I lose my temper here and I shouldn't." They become very paralyzed by a sin in their life. Not that I ever want to look cavalierly at that—we shouldn't. But for you to look at the Bible and say, "Because my relationship with sin changes and now I'm on a pathway of sanctification, any sin now becomes so debilitating because I shouldn't be doing it," is a misunderstanding. I understand we shouldn't be doing it, but until we are done with this fleshly body, we're going to have that battle with sin. However, we ought to be a different person than we were before.

As I like to say, the change of the gospel in our lives when we become Christians changes us from the inside out. The first thing we recognize, I think, as the difference between being a non-Christian and a real Christian, is that you start to sense that desire for holiness that comes from the inside. We want to see our lives conformed to Christ—not for someone else's sake, not for our reputation's sake, not just because people see my behavior, but because I dearly and desperately desire to please God. God is my King; God is my Redeemer. I want to see my life more and more conformed to His image. That is a change that really begins to rearrange things right away. It changes a lot of things about the secret aspects of my life where I'm really concerned about stuff that no one may know about, but it's hurting me because I want now to please God, as I am a new person in my spirit.

So, I just think if you see no difference in your life, then there's a problem. You hear in my preaching a lot of times the focus on, "Hey, let's make sure our lives are transformed." But really, I guess more technically, we should say we are being transformed, right? No longer conformed to the image of the world, but being transformed by the renewing of our mind. It's a process. We call it progressive sanctification. We're obviously changed inside, but there needs to be progress in our Christian life.

Speaker 3

What would you say to somebody that maybe has a persistent, ongoing struggle with sin, a particular sin, to know that they're making progress in it? What would they look for in maybe inside and outside?

Speaker 4

Well, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, you better be dealing with it severely. And when you see someone who's cavalier about sin and they call themselves Christians, you got to wonder, what's going on there.

Speaker 3

You'd want to see some regret.

Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah. And action on the other side. What am I going to do about that? You know, that needs to be a big deal if this is a bad illustration, I suppose.

But if chewing gum or smoking cigarettes or eating apricots or whatever, if those were the things that pinned Christ to the cross, you know, when you snuck your cigarette or you ate that apricot or you popped some gum in your mouth, you'd not only feel bad about it, but that you'd say, how can I now avoid this?

I'VE got to deal severely with this. And Jesus is very practical in talking about the avenues through which these temptations come, and we need to deal with those, because it's not just the sin, it's, where are you getting those apricots?

Speaker 3

You know, away from that.

Speaker 2

Why'd you buy that gum?

Speaker 4

Yeah, why you hang out with that guy that hands you the cigarette. You know, these are all illustrations, obviously, not making statements about any of those things necessarily.

Speaker 3

Wait, I can't eat apron.

Speaker 4

Yeah. I shouldn't buy you cigarettes as an example. But the point is, you get what I'm saying. If we know sin is something that is the thing that pins Christ to the cross, it is the thing for which he died. He came to destroy the works of the devil. And one of the primary ones is the sin that brings judgment. Well, I'm going to take that seriously when I fall into it.

So I would say the severity that we deal with it. And if you want to be practical about that, certainly at some point, as I like to say, you got to think on yourself with someone so you have some accountability. And you say, here's something that's been persistent. I can't seem to shake this. Help me with this.

I think you'll find, as the Bible says in First Corinthians 10, you'll find that our sins are very common. So immediately, I hopefully will find some help by people that won't say, oh, you're really weird, you have a persistent sin problem here. They'll say, oh, I get that, and they can come alongside and help you.

Speaker 3

Now, you mentioned accountability as maybe a tool to help you avoid these persistent sins. Are there other tools that we can utilize to help us in that area?

Speaker 1

Sure.

Speaker 4

Well, I think of Psalm 119, David says, or I think wrote Psalm 119. That's debatable, I suppose. But you know, your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. You've got to have, as it says in Colossians, the word of Christ richly dwelling in you. It's such a helpful thing in avoiding sin and temptation.

I mean, if you think about how Jesus responds to the temptation of Satan in the wilderness, he's quoting Scripture. And I know that's a Sunday school answer for a lot of listeners who are probably saying, "Oh, that's what we teach our kids in Sunday school." Well, that's a good thing. The reason we teach our kids that is because it's the right thing. Our brains need to be thinking about God's truth, especially when the lie of sin is bombarding our thoughts. So the word of God is important. We've got to memorize it. We got to have it in our mind.

That's why I like Christian radio so much. We have to be listening to things that are taking our minds to the truth of God's word. And, you know, it's one of the reasons we're on the air. We want to bombard the Christian mind out there across the country and around the world with the truth of God's word, kind of the unvarnished, straightforward principles of God's word, which can keep people from sin.

I'm sure if our listeners were asked, "Have you ever been in a temptation, turned on the radio or hit the play button or the streaming button and had that steer you away from sin?" I'm sure it would. Because the word of God, much like it was in that temptation in the desert for Christ, is a preventative safeguard against us diving into sin. The word of God is a corrective. It's convicting. It shows us the right path.

So accountability, the word of God, memorization, exposure to it, and other Christians—all those kinds of things—are essential.

Speaker 3

You have to turn away from sin, but you turn to something. Right? Right.

Speaker 4

And I was talking earlier today with someone about that. Just the idea of the replacement of these things. It's not like you say, well, take this temptation away or the sin away, and there's a vacuum. There always is something, I think, that God would have us replace those thoughts with.

I mean, sin in many ways is an artificial substitute of something. We got to find the real thing in Christ and know what that is. Because there is a solution to most of these problems we face every day. I should say all of them. I think there's some kind of godly expression of that sinful problem, you know, whatever the problem might be.

Even an outburst of anger, you know, there's a turbulent heart over something that there probably is an appropriate godly expression. But it's not that it's not kicking the dog, it's not yelling at your wife. There's other ways that God would want you to channel that.

And the Bible has a lot to say about righteous expressions of anything that causes us to sin or tempts us to sin, if you know what I mean. Any arena of our lives, you could say, well, that's sinful or that's sinful. There's probably some godly substitute to do the right thing in that situation.

Speaker 3

Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I trust this discussion has renewed some listeners' desire to move forward in their holiness.

I think it would help to continue this with a message you gave on breaking recurring patterns from the series *Our Fight with Sin*.

Speaker 2

Even though we as Christians rely on the grace and the forgiveness of God, the bottom line is that sin can still ruin your life. I mean, we can, as Christians, say that we are absolutely confident that we are adopted children of God and that we have the forgiveness of God. And because of the cross, all of our past, present, and future sins have all been paid for, and we're not going to encounter any condemnation for those. And that may all be true, but in the image of Proverbs 6, you cannot scoop fire into your lap without getting burnt.

But really, I think we need to even rephrase the problem. It's usually not a one-time act that we're concerned with regarding the real destructive and toxic power of sin. It takes root in our lives when we fall into recurring patterns of sin. It's one thing to kind of fall or stumble into a particular sin and then step right out, and it's another thing to find ourselves going back to it again and again. It could be, I suppose, depicted as a sin that so easily entangles us in Hebrews 12. If you haven't opened up your Bibles yet to that passage, please do to try and understand what it is to break these recurring patterns of sin and to fight this battle against temptation.

And if we're to do it, we certainly need the words of verses 12 and 13. Are you with me? Take a look at this text. Therefore, here come the imperatives, two of them: one in verse 12 and one in verse 13. He says, "Strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees." Strengthen them. In verse 13, he says, "Make level paths for your feet." And he says, you got to do that. Because there are really two options here. We don't want the lame, and in this case, it doesn't mean those that can't walk. That's a parallelism to verse 12. That is, the weak knees, the legs that aren't really walking this path as they ought, let alone running this race with perseverance, as we saw in the first part of the chapter.

He says, your legs aren't working right; you're stumbling, you're continuing to stumble. You're not pedestrian; you're not running as you should. He says, you don't want that to be disabled. Rather, wouldn't you rather have God heal that? And those are the two options. But let's look at the imperatives. Verse 12 says we need to strengthen our feeble arms and our weak knees. And that makes sense, right? The physical analogy runs throughout this chapter. If I'm going to be able to ward off some kind of physical restraint, I need to be physically strong.

The same thing is true here. If you're going to, in your spiritual life, say no to sin that keeps enslaving you to draw back to that same failure again and again, you're going to need to be spiritually strong. And that's the analogy here, number one. If you are the same spiritual strength this year as you were last year, then you're probably dealing with the same sins. If you don't get any stronger by next year, you're probably still going to be dealing with the same kind of sin. So we need to get strong.

And it doesn't mean we're not Wesleyans here. We don't believe that you're going to reach this level of perfection. You're going to continue to fight the good fight, like Paul did in 2 Timothy, his last book. On his deathbed, he says, you know what? I fought the good fight all the way to the end. If you don't get stronger, we're going to be stuck. Great.

Speaker 4

How do we do that?

Speaker 2

Take a look, for instance, in Hebrews chapter five. If we're going to be spiritually strong, there's some basic ingredients that need to be bolstered in our lives. You can't be spiritually strong without these things.

But take a look at Hebrews chapter 5, verse number 11. Here's one basic component. He says in this text, starting in verse 11, Hebrews 5, 11. We've got much to say about this. And that little demonstrative pronoun points back to this discussion about Melchizedek.

And they all went, who? Oh, yeah, that's right. He's some character back in the Old Testament. And then somebody else. Oh, yeah, that he referred to in Psalm 100. He's in the Psalms somewhere, too. But I don't know. That's hard.

Speaker 4

That's different.

Speaker 2

We don't quite track with you there. Writer of Hebrews. And he says, yeah, I know it's hard to explain to you guys because you're slow to learn. That's not a compliment, right? You're not keeping up here. And you're not keeping up. It's not because you haven't had time. I mean, you've had time.

Verse 12. In fact, though, by this time you ought to be teachers. By this time, you ought to have enough mastery of biblical knowledge, but you need someone to come in and teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. It's like, now this is a good analogy. It's like you need milk and not solid food.

Now here's the interesting relation to chapter 12: by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish between good and evil. There's the real practical point of connection to Chapter 12 when it comes to the path of either taking the off ramp of compromise and sin, or staying on the path of righteousness and saying no to temptation. You know, it's those who have had solid food and have constantly ingested that solid food. They're able to do that. But you know, if you're still sucking the bottle, you're not really apt and strong enough to resist the temptation. That's the real issue here.

Letter A. If you're going to get strong, here's what you need. You need more spiritual food. Just to keep in the analogy here, you got to move into the direction of something more challenging if you want your reoccurring pattern of sin to change. You need more of this book and you need a deeper encounter with this book on a more regular basis.

Which means that in the morning, if you spend time in this book, you're not just going to your favorite verses and reading about the simple truths of God. You're willing to move systematically through it. I suggest you take no more than one or two verses a day. You want a prescription? Here it is. You can write this down. Tan tan tan T stands for.

Then if you don't open your Bible and get ready as the initial encounter with that one or two verses in the morning, if you're not ready to put on the ancient cloak of a Greco-Roman world in the New Testament or ancient Judaism in the Old Testament and slide into the sandals of the ancient historic context of the text, then you're just drinking milk. Matter of fact, you're probably doing violence to the text. As you try to look for words and phrases and themes that apply to your afternoon meeting, you've got to start in a historical setting, which means that's why you buy those big fat books in the Christian bookstore to learn something about the historic context of the Bible.

And those verses also are made up of words and sentences. You need something of the grammatical setting of that. That's called the. Then if you don't spend 10 to 15 minutes just dealing with the ancient world in which those verses are set, I guarantee you, you are not going to be able to understand what God is saying on any level other than just the surface level of the text. There has to be an ingestion of the Word that begins within the next step then is a always.

You've got to be able to pull out principles, and this is a difficult part, but you've got to train yourself to do it. To be able to look at a text after spending 10 to 15 minutes in one verse on the ancient context, to be able then to extract from that the eternal truths that are true for all time, the universal truths. And that's something you've got to get in the habit of doing all the time. Don't rely on someone you're hearing on the radio or your pastor on Sunday. You can never be a Berean who gets into the Word and ingests that word on a level that's going to strengthen you to be able to face temptation unless you do the then get in that for 10 to 15 minutes, the always.

That's going to take brain work for at least five to seven minutes. And then we can get to the end, right? And that's the now. Now we can start talking and thinking and processing that passage for the sake of my afternoon client meeting that I have, dealing with the neighbor next door, dealing with my marriage, focusing on the ways that this might change my relationship with my kids, the way it might adjust my values.

But you see, you're going to spend a good 20 to 25 minutes dealing with issues that are preludes to accurately applying the depth of that passage. And that's work. I mean, that's 35 to 45 minutes a day just to do that in one verse.

Speaker 4

The Scriptures.

Speaker 2

We got some work to do. If you want to change that pattern to recurring sin, it's going to take a new relationship to God's Word. Because the problem for Christians is not the knowing; usually, it's the doing, right? And so we've just got to put this into action. We've got to become students of God's Word. You need more spiritual food if you're going to be spiritually strong.

Here in Hebrews chapter 5 and 6, look across the page at the beginning of chapter 5. There's another element we learned about spiritual strength in the book of Hebrews, and it came from the pattern of Jesus' life. Look at verse 7 in Hebrews chapter 5. It says, during the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up. What's the word? Prayers. Prayers and petitions. What kind of prayers? With loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverent submission. If we're going to conquer sin, it's going to take the second basic biblical ingredient, and that is that our prayer life has to be happening.

Okay, number two on your outline: you not only need more spiritual food and better quality of spiritual food, but secondly, you need more times of focused prayer. And by that, I mean I know we all pray. I know you say a few words before a meal, and I know you probably pray with your kids before you put them to bed and maybe pray with your wife in the morning. That's great. But a lot of that is just real simple, surface checking in with God kind of talk. We need this kind of stuff. What kind of prayers? Well, look at it again. Petitions, loud cries, and tears. That's a different kind of praying than most of us are used to. You want to conquer this recurring pattern of sin in your life. It's going to take a deeper relationship with God's Word, and it's going to take more fervent and focused prayer. We've got to make this the pattern of our lives.

Remember that very classic passage on fighting temptation in Ephesians chapter 6, the armor of God? We think the important things are all analogized by a part of the armor that we're supposed to put on to fight the attacks of the evil one, to stand firm on that evil day. And they are. They're all important: all the breastplate, the helmet, the shoes. But the one that he doesn't analogize, that doesn't get representation on the flannel graph board, after all the discussion of the armor, here's what he says: you need to pray. You need to pray. It needs to be about prayer. It needs to be fervent prayer in the Spirit. He makes it clear. I mean, maybe the reason you're falling to the same sin over and over again is because there's not a lot of this kind of praying going on.

Now, again, think about that. Spiritual strength comes from the two basic ingredients of the Christian life. It comes through a better relationship and a deeper relationship with God's Word, and it comes through a more fervent and focused prayer life. I want to talk about spiritual strength. If we're going to make our arms that are feeble strong, and our knees that are weak sturdy and stout, then here's what you need. You need a third ingredient at least. I know we could list five or six, but these are like the top three in the book of Hebrews.

Look at verse 23. Remember this: let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess. That's a great statement about being strong, standing up, not compromising, holding on to this Christian commitment that we have. For he who is promised is faithful. And he says, you want to do that? Here's a good way to do it. Little conjunction to tie these things together: let us consider how we may spur one another on to love and good deeds. You're going to need to do this as a team effort. And let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. But let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.

If we're going to be strong, we need some strong friends around us, all the more as we see the day approaching. Why is that? Because the Bible predicts the closer we get to that day, the worse off the world will be. Translation: the more temptation you're going to encounter. So what do we need? We need more strong Christian friends around us because, in increasing measure, as the world gets to be a more tempting place, that Ecclesiastes 4 passage, by the way, is great, right? Two are better than one, because when one falls down, the other can help them up, and a cord of three strands is not easily broken. The defensive nature of that simple observation by Solomon is so helpful in our spiritual quest.

I mean, if I had two or three people in the area of weakness helping me in that one area, there's help there, there's strength there. So we need to get strong. The text says, strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees. The analogy is your spiritual life has to be able to fight off the entanglement of this sin that's always cropping up in your life. But there's something else.

Go back to verse 13 of Hebrews chapter 12. There's not only an internal examination of I need to be stronger here; there's something now that flips in verse 13 to being external. He says, make level paths for your feet. That's a quotation of what passage? Proverbs chapter 4, verse 26. And it's one that's often seen in the book of Proverbs. To the extent that I can control it, I want to be able to make level paths for my feet. I don't want to be choosing to walk down some gravelly laden path or big rocks jetting out of the path. I want to be able to have as smooth a path as possible.

Now, in this world, the path will never be perfectly smooth, right? We cannot avoid temptation in the world, but we can minimize it. And the question is, to the extent that I can control it, what am I doing to, number two on your outline, steer clear of temptation? Because that's what it means to make the level path. I want to pick a path that is as free from the temptations of sin, particularly the sin that so easily entangles me. I want to do the best I can to walk a path that avoids as many of those bumps as possible.

Speaker 1

Our Fight with Sin: Breaking Recurring Patterns is the title of today's study from Pastor Mike Fabarez, and this is Focal Point. Sin is tough, but God has equipped us with all we need to resist it. God's Word plays a significant role in fixing our minds on something better.

Well, that's a lesson learned by Ty, who recently wrote, "My life changed with all kinds of blessings practically immediately after I was saved. In 2001, I partied a lot in LA and stopped when a pastor and his son came unannounced to my door one day. Three years later, I discovered my brother had his entire church praying for me every Sunday for a month until that day when I was saved. I've been growing my faith ever since. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I'm blessed by Pastor Mike's messages each day. God is truly working in Mike to help challenge me the way I need to be challenged by His Word. God is good."

Well, repentant hearts like Ty's are the reason why Focal Point is dedicated to bringing you these in-depth studies by radio, podcast, web, and our mobile app. You can stream Pastor Mike's messages for 24/7 access, and it's all made possible because listeners like you give generously to keep this going.

When you give today, you're going to receive a book by Ron Rhodes called What Happens After Life: Amazing Revelations About Heaven and Hell. This is a powerful read for believers and pre-believers who've never thought about the afterlife. Ask for it when you call 888-320-5885 or go online to focalpointradio.org.

If you're new to the Focal Point family, welcome! Call in today and ask for the free gift Pastor Mike wants to send you. It's a bracing CD message called Priorities in Tension. Get your free CD by calling 888-320-5885.

I'm Dave Drouy, wishing you a wonderful weekend. Pastor Mike Fabarez continues his journey through Luke Chapter 3 next week, so be sure to come back Monday for Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.