If a person doesn’t hate their sins, and not just the consequences of their sins, they will keep doing the same foolish things, and keep suffering the consequences. To stop this, a person must change their life and hate their sins. Until they do, helping them in their crises won’t create any lasting impact in their life, only a temporary one.
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another End Times post.
Have you ever watched as someone committed sin after sin, then ran into trouble soon after? Have you watched as they got themselves into a situation they needed rescuing from? Have you seen people suffer the consequences of their actions?
Have you been this person at any time in your life? I know I have, it is what it is. We’ve all been there before.
But I’m not in the same crisis situation today. Today, I follow Jesus Christ and live a different life. I do things differently, I don’t commit the old sins I used to (though I still struggle with some). I move smarter. And this has kept me out of most trouble.
But that’s the key right there—I turned to Jesus and made those life changes. So what happens when we don’t do that? Nothing good, I can tell you that. Things don’t change for the better, they only get worse. And that will happen to anyone in trouble who doesn’t make life changes.
No matter how bad we want to help people struggling with the consequences of their actions, we can’t help anyone who won’t change. And in these End Times, we don’t have much time left for trying with them. So that’s the topic for today.
People who Want to Drown
I thought of today’s topic when I was reading Self-Reliance and Other Essays. It’s a collection of writings by the early U.S. writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s not exactly a Christian book. But I make an effort to read a variety of books on different subjects.
Anyway, the following passage jumped out at me when I read it. It struck me as being so true and real, because I have direct experience with this idea in my life. And I bet many of you do too.
It is a main lesson of wisdom to know your own from another’s. […] A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischiefs of their vices, but not from their vices. Charity would be wasted on this poor waiting on the symptoms. A wise and hardy physician will say, Come out of that, as the first condition of advice.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience,” in Self-Reliance and Other Essays, Page 99
How true. Sinning leads to consequences. There’s always a price to pay for disobeying God and following the devil. But we all have a sin nature, and we all get tempted to various sins because they’re pleasurable. When we have to suffer the natural consequences of our sin, we want to be rescued from them. But we don’t want to give up the pleasurable temptation that caused the problem we need to be rescued from. But treating the surface-level problems is pointless. If we don’t give up the sins causing these problems we need rescue from, they’ll just reappear later.
Let me give some examples, so we can imagine what I’m talking about.
Let’s start with a mild example, something minor and inconsequential. We love ice cream, but eat it too fast and suffer an “ice cream headache,” the painful sensation in our skull from the cold temperature of the ice cream. And if we haven’t been eating anything with sugar for a long time, like a month or more, all that sugar from the ice cream can give us severe stomach pains and diarrhea.
Where’s the sin here? It’s not a sin to like ice cream, but we should enjoy it in moderation, and exercise self-control in how we eat it. If we give in to the vice of our gluttonous nature, we eat too much ice cream or eat it too fast. Then we suffer the natural consequences of giving in to our gluttony like that. We don’t like those consequences when we suffer them, they’re painful and we want them to stop. But will we change our ways though? Will we reform our lives and abstain from the vice that caused our problems? Because if we don’t fix our consumption of ice cream, this will all happen again.
I told you the first example would be something inconsequential. Something that doesn’t really matter. Now let’s think of something more serious. Something with real consequences that have a lasting impact on our life.
Think of a man who loves sex, the pleasure of sex. Giving in to his sinful, lusting nature, he runs around town having sex with many women. There’s no emotional connection in this sex, no love or Spiritual meaning behind it. No, it’s only about the physical pleasure and nothing else. Low vibration, animal, carnal pleasure. If it’s all about the pleasure and has nothing to do with emotions, it doesn’t matter who he has sex with, as long as he has lots of sex. And so he does.
It’s tragic any time a man or woman gets trapped in this slavery of constant pleasure seeking. They have plenty of sex, plenty of physical pleasure, but they’re always seeking more, more, more. Because these short-lived pleasures leave them unfulfilled and unhappy. They turn to worldly pleasures to find meaning in their lives, to find happiness and fulfillment. But the pleasures of the world don’t provide lasting happiness. Their satisfaction fades, forcing us to either break out of the cycle of constant pleasure seeking, or continue the never-ending quest for our next hit of pointless pleasure. A person who follows all their desires for pleasure will always be controlled by their desires, rather than the other way around.
Anyway. Back to our example, the promiscuous man having sex with every woman he can. We can all imagine what kind of consequences he might have to deal with because of his actions. First, there’s the obvious. If he isn’t using any protection, he’s going to get sick with an STD and get more than one woman pregnant. As he deals with the physical pain of the STD, and the thought of having to support his new children one way or another (like having to pay child support), he despairs and cries about his “misfortunes.” He hates dealing with the painful STD, he desperately wants relief from it. He doesn’t want to take care of his children, doesn’t want to spend his money raising them. He wants to be saved from his present circumstances, he wants a way out.
But let’s say there is a way out for the man in our example. Even if he gets a miraculous cure for his illness, and skips town to avoid taking care of his children, he will still repeat these events all over again, even though he knows the consequences. He will keep doing this until he battles the sin at the root of his actions: lust.
Understand this well: No one will ever escape the consequences of their sins for long if they don’t give up the sins and vices causing the problems. If they don’t change their lives, they will keep suffering the same disasters. That’s why it’s pointless to help their surface-level problems if they won’t give up the root cause vices and sins.
If a person doesn’t hate their sins, and not just the consequences of their sins, they will keep doing the same foolish things, and keep suffering the consequences. To stop this, a person must change their life and hate their sins. Until they do, helping them in their crises won’t create any lasting impact in their life, only a temporary one.
Does this idea sound familiar to you? It should. Jesus taught this same idea in the Gospels.
Fill the House, Close the Door!
By the power and the authority of Jesus Christ, we can be delivered from the demons that tempt us to sin. These demons can be driven out of us, as Jesus explained and we see in the Gospels many times. But what if the person who gets rescued from their demons doesn’t change their life afterwards? What happens when someone gets rescued by Jesus, but doesn’t give up their sins and vices?
The Savior tells us in Matthew 12 that demon spirits wander around after being cast out. Since they find no rest, they go back to the person who they were cast out of (the house they were kicked out of). If the person hasn’t changed their life, if they haven’t filled their house with God, the demons will walk right back in. And they’ll bring their friends. A person must change their life and turn to God after being rescued from their sins. They must change their ways, hate their sins, and live differently. If they don’t, they’ll keep finding themselves in the same trouble they always do. And things will get worse and worse for them.
(43) “When an unclean spirit leaves a person, it wanders through dry places looking for a place to rest. But it doesn’t find any. (44) Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the place vacant, cleaned up, and decorated. (45) Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself. They go in and make their home there. That person is worse off at the end than at the beginning. This is the way it will be also for this evil generation.”
Matthew 12:43-45 (CEB)
God will rescue us from our sins, and sometimes the consequences of them. Sometimes, a person sent by God will fulfill this role. When that happens, we’ve been given a chance. We must make the most of it.
If we don’t change our lives after being rescued from the consequences of our sins, we leave the door open for the demons of sin to return. They’ll come back, tempt us to the same sins, and create the same problems for us. And it’ll be even worse, as more demons will be involved.
Frank Hammond wrote about this in Pigs in the Parlor, his classic book on Spiritual warfare. He explains that sins create an open door for demons to enter us. If we don’t change our lives, stop those sins (close the doors), and fill our lives with Jesus then the demons will come back in. With all their friends. The reason we need to fill our lives with Jesus is because when we give up the sins, there will be a void in their place. That void needs to be filled up with something holy. Jesus, a changed life, a life of seeking holiness and Spiritual growth. That’s what we need to “fill the house up.” If the demons return to find our house empty (no Jesus, no pursuit of Virtue and holiness), we go right back to where we were. Nothing changes for the better; our relief was only temporary, and things actually get worse.
Can a Non-Christian be Delivered?
Frank Hammond, Pigs in the Parlor, Pages 154-155
The obvious answer to this question is yes. Demons must obey those who exercise the authority of the name of Jesus. […] Nevertheless, I doubt seriously the wisdom of such a deliverance for two reasons. First, what hope would there be of keeping the demons out? Would they not soon return? One must personally resist the devil, and he has no ground for doing this unless he is submitted to the Lord. Sin opens the door for the demons to come in, and an unconverted sinner who has not repented of his sins is open prey for the devil. Second, according to scripture, you could do him more harm than good. According to Matthew 12:43-45, when an unclean spirit is cast out he will seek to return. If nothing of God replaces the void the unclean spirit can come back and bring other and more wicked spirits than himself so that “the last state of the man is worse than the first.”
So you can see why treating the surface-level symptoms is pointless, as Ralph Waldo Emerson says in the quote at the top. We can try helping people with the consequences of their sins. Rescue them from a crisis. Step in and stand up for them. But if they won’t change their life, stop their sins, and accept Jesus … what then? Their sins and lack of a relationship with Jesus will lead them right back to where they were.
If that’s what happens, then … should we even bother? Well, if we have Christian compassion and empathy it’s hard for us not to get involved sometimes. But in the End Times, we don’t have the time to get invested into causes we can see aren’t working.
Who’s Ready to Swim, and Who Isn’t?
We need to be discerning and have Wisdom about who we can help, and who we can’t. Some people can’t be helped, because they won’t help themselves. They won’t change their ways.
And we don’t have much time left before Jesus returns, so we don’t have the time to get invested in those who won’t help themselves. How do we tell the difference then? We must invest in helping those who show by their actions that they’re serious about changing and turning to Jesus. We must help with the consequences of their sins, and then help them to change.
Change can only come from within. If a person wants to be saved from the consequences of their sins, they must want to change. They must hate the sins that led them to where they are. They must be Disciplined about staying away from those old sins. They must change, and turn to Jesus. But only they can do this, we can’t do it for them.
If a person shows through their actions that they do want to change, we must help and guide them.
As for those who won’t change their ways, there’s not much we can do. Maybe a dollar given here and there, a hot meal from time to time. That’s about it. We know that if we help them, try to rescue them from the problems they caused for themselves, it won’t mean anything in the end. Their relief will be temporary. They’ll only need a rescue again later. And we won’t have the time, money, or energy to rescue them next time. Their problems will drain us. We’ll drown trying to save them.
In these End Times, we don’t have any time left to waste. We can’t waste our Charity helping those who won’t help themselves. Though the New Testament teaches us to be compassionate, forgiving, and patient, we also need to be smart. If a person shows more than once through their actions that they won’t give up the sins at the root cause of their problems, we need to stop helping them deal with the consequences they create for themselves.
Think back to the quote from Emerson, back at the top. Imagine we’re in a pool full of people drowning. We can get pulled down and drown by trying to help. It’s worth it to try helping, and we must try, if a person is ready to swim for themselves after a rescue. If they’re ready to give up their sins and vices, and truly change their whole life. If they’re ready to accept Jesus and follow Him, so they can stay in safety.
If they aren’t willing to make these changes, we have to leave them and swim to safety ourselves. We can’t drown ourselves trying to help those who won’t swim for themselves. It’s a hard choice to make, but Jesus calls us to make it in these End Times. He calls us to pray for discernment: Who has shown that they want to be safe, and who has shown that they still want to drown? Our energy, our help, our Charity is precious and limited. We must direct it correctly, and never waste it.
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Until next time, be strong and do good!
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