The wrath of God insists that every iniquity must be recompensed. If God does not recompense every iniquity, He will deny Himself, and God cannot deny Himself. Even when God became man in the person of Jesus and sin was placed on Him, God did not forgive Jesus but killed Him. You can truly break free from lust and every form of immorality. Not through willpower or empty promises, but through the powerful spiritual reality of what Jesus did on the cross.
Forgiveness is a spiritual technology by which God removes every offense, purges every offense out of a man, and releases all the anger in His (God) heart.
1) Understand Expiation and Propitiation in order to Break Free from Lust
Expiation.
Expiation is where the word “atonement” comes from. In expiation, God washes away the sin. God does not want to see sin. If He sees it—even if it is on Jesus—He will kill Him.
Propitiation.
Propitiation is the fact that the anger God has toward sin must be released. That is, judgment must be passed for every transgression.
For example, if you have a cat and someone stabs the cat and it dies, then you take the case to court. Suddenly, another person shows up and says, “Hey, I will pay for the cat,” and pays the exact amount. What that person has done is remove the guilt from the killer of the cat because he has paid the worth of the cat. Yet, even though the person has paid, the emotional connection you have with your cat still keeps anger in your heart toward the one who killed it.
It is called the law of double jeopardy. If somebody is exonerated and you judge that person again, you are judging an innocent person. That is the system God has put in place for our salvation.
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2) Every Believer is Cleansed from all their Sins
If believers do not know this, they will never break free from lust. God forgives because He wants to restore the relationship that was lost between Him and man. For that to happen, the guilt of sin must be removed from the man so that he can boldly come to God. Also, the anger in the heart of God must be removed so that God can freely embrace the man. This is only possible when expiation and propitiation take place.
1 John 1:7 “But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.”
Jesus’s sacrifice covered three major things:
- Washes you.
- Satisfies the anger of God.
- Destroys the works of the devil.
When Jesus hung on the cross, He was washing away your sins. That is why it is called substitution. He took our place and carried our guilt.
2 Corinthians 5:21: “He made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we, through Him, might become the righteousness of God.”
Jesus took your place by cleansing your sins. He took off your sins and could not just throw them away because somebody must be guilty for the sin. When He took your sins, He bore them for you. God looked at you and saw that you were no longer the sinner. God looked for the sin and found it on Christ. So, God poured His anger on Jesus by killing Him. Two things happened: you were washed, and the One who carried your sin was destroyed. Jesus died, went to Hades, and met the author of sin.
Colossians 2:14: “Having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a public show of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
3) To break free from lust, the Power of Life Must Be Activated
The reason people struggle is because they use mechanical things to deal with something that is spiritual. The spirituality of sin runs so deep in their soul that nothing mechanical can reach it. How can you change lying tongues by advising them? Their brain is already programmed to tell a thousand lies, and they can defend that lie for ten years. You cannot talk them out of it. Something has to happen—an internal surgery—to reprogram their consciousness.
Do you think you can change someone who fornicates every week just by talking to them? Even if the demon is cast out, their hormones are already being secreted, their endocrine glands are functioning, and their adrenaline and receptors have been trained to operate in a certain way. It takes power to correct and reprogram them, and that power comes when the law of the Spirit of life is awakened.
Every one of us who is born again with eternal life has the potential to break free from lust. The question is, “Is that law activated?” For that law to be activated, you must find an assurance in God that draws you close enough to Him for His presence to awaken you. The law of God must begin to woo you so that your walk with God is no longer external but internal. God will woo you, and you will not even know why you went for the prayer meeting. You will not go because they promised you healing but because something woos you from inside
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4) Search What Activates Your Spirit and Nurture It
Jude 1:20: “But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit…”
When the law of the Spirit of life is activated, it will show you a protocol. For some people, the protocol is prayer. For others, it is worship, revelation, or giving. Those protocols are what that law rides on. The more you engage it, the stronger it becomes.
For some, it could be songs. You may find yourself sleeping with a song and waking up with the same song. It is not just a song you are singing—you are chanting a rhythm, a rhythm that awakens you to God.
The first thing God used to break the power of sin in my life was sound. If I hear any sorrowful song, I can sing it for one year. That is why my best singers are South Africans. Sometimes, I keep the sorrowful part of the song and repeat it. As they sing it, something rises on my inside. Sometimes I am hearing the song, singing, and crying.
When I rise up, I rise up as a lion and conqueror because that chant was a spiritual ritual provoking something on my inside. I do not listen to every song. The kinds of songs I listen to are sorrowful songs. They come like echoes of deep waters. They draw my soul to a quiet place, a lonely place in the spirit. My soul stays there until the Holy Ghost shows up. I have an encounter, and when I come out, something is born that will affect my generation.
5) Become Conscious of the Love of God
Forgiveness destroys or weakens the consciousness of sin. When the consciousness of sin is weakened, the consciousness of the love of God is enthroned. The love of God is what constrains you to break free from lust.
Many Christians, instead of knowing the love of God, are more conscious of their wickedness and sin. Therefore, they cannot draw resources from the realm of God. Day in and day out, they struggle to overcome sin in order to please God. If only they knew that they are already forgiven, they would come into an embrace of the love of God. Forgiveness destroys the consciousness of sin and awakens the consciousness of the love of God.
6) Understand the Manipulation of the Devil
Forgiveness delivers us from guilt and the accusations of the devil. The devil is the manipulator. You may stand up and say, “Father, I will not lie again.” Then the devil begins to laugh, “You will lie today.” The devil will bombard you until you lie.
You might say, “Father, I will never fornicate again.” The devil will look at you and laugh, “Are you not aware that with the level of fornication you have done, God cannot use you again?” He will say, “You should be begging and hoping that you will make heaven, yet you are here talking about doing something for God.” Because of the guilt, you become discouraged and sometimes begin to weep. When the devil gets you there, he locks you up, takes the key, and throws it into an ocean so that you will never come out.
When you keep saying to God, “I cannot do it again,” the devil will prove that you will do it again. Instead, we should stop making those promises and start embracing the love of God. When we embrace the love of God, we realize that we stopped doing those things without even knowing when we stopped. If we keep promising and failing, we will become discouraged and will never live above sin.
Revelation 12:11: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.”
What does the blood of the Lamb say?
- The blood of the Lamb says you are forgiven.
- The blood of the Lamb says you are redeemed.
- You have been qualified to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.
- You did nothing, but Jesus did everything. For the first time, you will be able to look away from yourself and look at what God has done. Many times, we only look at ourselves and do not look at what God is saying or what God has done. That is why we are grossly limited.
Inspired by Apostle Michael Orokpo Sermon
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