Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
It must be more than that since I never met any who have plucked out their eyes or cut off their arms.
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I give the most credence to 2.5% which is from Howard Pittman's testimony which reads to me as one of the more credible accounts. This implies about 10% of Christians are born again if you divide by 1/4 since about one quarter of the population self identifies as Christian.
This number seems realistic since about this ratio of Christians seem to have surrendered their life to Jesus from my personal experience. This is what I hope for but maybe I'm biased for the sake of my own sanity. Regardless Jesus made it sound like it wouldn't seem like a whole lot and if it turns out that way we can't really blame him because he warned us.
According to my current theological understanding if you are not free of porn you cannot enter heaven. Given that so many men are, just on the basis of this one addiction alone, many will not make it if they die without overcoming this addiction by the power of the blood of Jesus.
Jesus of course was giving us an idea of the extreme measures we have to take to be free of sexual immorality. We don't have to pluck our eye out but we can go to other extremes like move our computers to the living room and practice accountability partners. But on a literal level I don't think he was wrong about it either.
It's actually not as hard as it sounds because our flesh is like a monster which requires food to survive. All you have to do is stop feeding it and feed your spirit instead. In the beginning it is hard because the monster will be hungry and ask you for food. You just keep ignoring that thing and run to Jesus and others who call on his name out of a pure heart instead. Eventually it will die and we will realize only Jesus could ever satisfy us. Satan started out as a serpent in Eden but ends as a huge dragon in revelation. That's because someone's been feeding that sucker with their free will. In the battle of flesh vs spirit the one who wins is the one we choose to feed the most.
If we stumble we don't give up but confess our sins and keep trying and call on the Lord to save us. The Christian life is compared to warfare in the bible so we should expect grenades to blow up in our faces from time to time.
Another thing that helped for me was to have faith in the verse that says we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Paul said he had become a spectacle to angels. There are invisible beings who are always watching us, we are never alone even when we think we are. Not only that but Sin always starts from a thought in our mind so we have to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ Jesus. Rebuke every temptation that comes into your mind. Remember that Jesus lives in you. Don't do anything you wouldn't be comfortable if Jesus was holding your hand, because he's even closer to you than that.
All the tips of how we can become free from sin and slaves to Christ is in the holy bible. We just have to learn to wield it as a weapon against the enemy's attacks. Without the Spirit and the word we don't stand a chance because we were created to be lower than the angels. But greater is He who is in us than the one in the world. It just takes faith!