Victory Is An Inside Job

Victory Is An Inside Job

          This series has three myth-busting messages: (1) Focus on the Good; (2) Friend with the Good; and (3) Fight for the Good.

       Today, I’d like to talk about how to Focus on the Good.

       Let me warn you. What I’m going to tell you today is controversial. In this message, you’ll read stuff that you won’t hear very often…

Where’s The Fight Taking Place?

       Do you fall into sin?

       Have you ever fought temptation and lost?

       I’m asking this question because, uh, I can’t relate. Sin is very foreign to me. In fact, I always ask my friends, “Can you describe what it feels like to sin? Because, frankly, I’ve never experienced it.”

Well, okay, I do admit I have one little, tiny, itsy, bitsy weakness…

I lie. 

       Haha.

Okay, no more jokes. If you have sinned against God, then keep reading. Because your preacher is the greatest sinner.   Name a sin, and 99% of the time, I’ve done it.  (I haven’t killed anyone. At least, I don’t remember.)

       So today, I speak to you as one fellow-sinner to another fellow-sinner. I share with you today the lessons I’ve learned while I was stuck in the muck of sin.

Yes, your preacher is bruised, broken, and bandaged—but still blessed by the mercy of God.

Here’s the big thing I realized. When I find myself trapped in my habitual sins, it’s because I was fighting in the wrong arena.

I was fighting outside me when the battle was inside me.

       No wonder I was losing!

       We think temptation is as an external problem. It’s not.  It’s an internal problem.  Because all these external temptations are almost powerless if it didn’t have allies working within me.

       Here’s my big message for you today: Victory is an inside job. 

By the way, failure is an inside job too…

The Fight Is Within You

My mother lived during the Japanese war.

And she has all sorts of crazy stories to tell.

One of them was that before the war began, she said there were Japanese vendors selling their stuff on the streets of Manila. But when the Japanese army attacked the Philippines, these Japanese vendors—who were dressed very simply—turned out to be high-ranking officers of the Japanese army.

It’s like the story of the Trojan horse.

For 10 years, the Greeks were trying to conquer the city of Troy, but with very little success. The city of Troy was impregnable, with high thick walls and a massive gate that the Greek soldiers couldn’t destroy, no matter how hard they tried.

But one day, the Trojans (the people who live in Troy) saw the Greek soldiers sail away. And saw that the Greeks left behind a giant wooden horse.

The Trojans brought the horse into their city as a trophy of war. They didn’t know that the Greeks just pretended to sail away. And that inside the wooden horse were Greek soldiers hiding.

That night, when the Trojans were asleep, the Greek soldiers came out of hiding and opened the gates of the city–welcoming the returning Greek soldiers. They marched in and destroyed the city of Troy.

       Read carefully: You fall not because of the strong temptation outside you but because of the weak situation inside you.

The temptation shouldn’t have been powerful.

But someone opened the gate.

Who is that someone? 

Your Trojan Horse.

This Trojan Horse is the greatest, most powerful, most potent, most deadly weapon of the devil.

The Greatest Weapon Of The Devil

       One day in Hell, there was an Annual Infernal Conference attended by the all devils in the world. The Theme of the Conference was, “Our Greatest Weapon Against God’s People”.

       The first Speaker—a high-ranking devil—stood on stage and announced, “There is no debate about this. Our greatest weapon against God’s people is lust!” All his listeners applauded. He explained, “Even Presidents, Priests, and Preachers are totally defenseless against lust!”  And the entire crowd roared in agreement.

       The second Speaker came up. Wearing a black tuxedo with a thick gold ring on every finger, he declared, “The first speaker is stupid. Don’t listen to him. Because our greatest weapon is greed!” The audience drank his every word. He said, “Imagine the billions of people who are suffering today because of our assistants on planet earth—greedy politicians!”  And the whole assembly screamed, “Yeheey!”

       The third Speaker climbed up on the platform amidst the sound of blasting trumpets. He wore a royal red robe and a golden crown. With extreme arrogance, he shouted, “The first two speakers told you a bunch of crap. Don’t listen to those ignoramuses. Because our greatest weapon is…” and he clenched his fist in the air, “…Pride!”  The entire hall thundered with applause. He screamed, “Every war in the history of mankind was caused by pride!”

Finally, the last Speaker of the Conference stood up. And when they saw him, the room became deathly quiet. Because everyone knew who he was. He was the devil that brought the most number of souls away from God.

He wore a simple black robe. He spoke quietly. He said, “There is something more powerful than lust and greed and pride. In fact, I compare lust, greed, and pride to wooden toy slingshots. And I compare our greatest weapon to a nuclear bomb. Because with our greatest weapon, you can multiply the power of lust, greed, and pride by a million times…”

By this time, all the devils in the hall were shouting to the top of their lungs, “What is it? What is our greatest weapon?”

He waved his hand to quiet the crowd.

And he whispered, “Our greatest weapon is… self-rejection.”

When External Spiritual Activity Isn’t Enough

       Self-rejection is the Trojan Horse of temptation. It opens the gate of your soul to temptation. That’s why you lose the battle.

       I speak with authority because this was my experience.

Decades ago, I couldn’t kick the habit of pornography. For years, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get out of its deathly grip. All my energies and time were being consumed by this addiction.

At that time, I asked my religious leaders, “How can I fight temptation? It’s so overwhelming.” And these spiritual people would give me pat, canned answers.

They’d say, “You need to pray more,” or “You need to memorize the Bible more,” or “You need to attend more prayer meetings,” or “You need to avoid the situations that lead you to sin”

       All these advices are great stuff.  (In fact, I’ll give you the same advice in the third part of this series, but from a different angle.)

But at that time, I was shocked when they didn’t work on me.

I still fell into sin. Repeatedly. I still was trapped as ever. I told myself, “Hey, I doubled my prayer time. Why did I fall? Gosh, there must be reallysomething wrong with me!”

Here’s why these activities failed: Because all these good advices was telling me to focus on the fight “outside” me.  “Add spiritual activities, like adding ammunition, and you’ll win.”

Soon, their advices added to my frustration—which made me sin even more.

How?  

First of all, I already hated myself for falling into sin again and again. And now, I had a brand new reason to hate myself. Because I promised to pray more and memorize the Bible more—and I failed to do them too!

This vicious cycle of self-rejection led to more sin.

The Anatomy of Habitual Sin

       Let me tell you something that very few people will tell you…

       Behind every sin is a cry for love.

       Your greatest and deepest need is to be loved. Mother Teresa said, “the greatest poverty is the poverty of being unloved.” When you don’t fill this great hunger for love, you scramble and grab anything that will quiet this hunger.

       So you look for a replacement. A painkiller. An anesthetic.

       That narcotic is sin. 

Because the pleasure of sin is the pirated version of the pleasure of being loved.

The problem with the fake version is that it’ll never truly satisfy your deepest hunger. Instead, it will increase your need. What used to satisfy no longer satisfies. Over time, you’ll need to increase the dose of the narcotic.

 A porn addict starts looking for unnatural sex. A gambler starts gambling with higher amounts of money. An adulterer starts searching for more partners.

Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. Gambling. Materialism. Food addiction.  Approval addiction. At the core of all addictions, they’re all the same: It’s a desperate need for love.

       Let me give you another analogy…

Love Is Expensive

       In many streets of Metro Manila, you’ll see rugby boys. It’s a heart-wrenching sight. I cry whenever I see them. Little boys—as young as six years old—sniffing rugby on the sidewalk, looking at the world with glazed eyes.

These kids are hungry for food. But because food is expensive and rugby is cheap, they go for the drug. To forget their hunger, they sniff the brain-shrinking, neuron-burning chemical adhesive.

But people who have habitual sins are in the exact same boat.

We’re hungry for love. But love is expensive and sin is cheap. So we go for our habitual sin to deaden the inner pain of our hunger for love.

I repeat: Love is expensive.

Believe me. It’s not easy to love yourself. To value yourself. To forgive yourself. To accept yourself. It’s easier to sin than to do the hard work of loving yourself the way God loves you.

How Will You Know If You’ve Got A Trojan Horse?

There are 3 signs to know if there’s a Trojan Horse in you…

First, you don’t love yourself. You reject you.  You hate you. You don’t accept who you are. You don’t celebrate you.

       Second, your most important relationships are dysfunctional. You don’t receive love from your closest relationships. Even if there are people around you who truly love you, you can’t see this nor receive this love.

       Third, you worship a “rejecting” God. A legalistic, cruel, judgmental God. So you don’t receive love from God as well.

       Unless you heal this inner wound and start learning to love yourself the way God loves you, you’ll never be able to win over temptation.

       Next week, I’ll talk about how to do this.

       But let me give you the first step that you need to do to fight the battle within…

Receive God’s Unconditional Love Now

       Let me repeat: The pleasure of sin is the pirated version of the pleasure of being loved. 

Do you want to experience the pleasure of being loved? 

       Receive God’s unconditional love today!

       And take your cue from God.

Don’t focus on your badness; Focus on your goodness.

       Don’t hate yourself. Don’t reject yourself. Or this self-rejection will cause you to sin even more.

       He loves you more than you can ever imagine.

Have you sinned? Have you fallen?

       God doesn’t look at what you did wrong.

       God looks at what you did right.

       God doesn’t focus on your failures.

       God focuses on your future.

       In your eyes, you’re bruised, bandaged, and broken. In God’s eyes, you’re beautiful, beloved, and blessed.

The Bible says, But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. (Romans 8:5, 11)

What is God saying here? He says, “Don’t focus on your sinful nature. Focus instead on your spiritual nature. Can you imagine? My own Spirit is in you!”

In other words, focus on the good.

This is a mind-blowing truth.  That the same awesome power that created every atom, molecule, pebble, leaf, tree, valley, ocean, mountain, planet, sun, star, and galaxy… yes, the most powerful force in the universe… is in you.

       May your dreams come true,       

-Bo Sanchez

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