Purify Your Mind Series (Part 2) by Joe KirbySample

Take Ownership of Your Sin

Imagine a thief enters your church, sits next to you, and complains, “I can’t stop breaking into people’s houses and stealing things! It’s my besetting sin. I keep begging the Lord to take this sin out of my life, but so far nothing has changed. I’m still stealing things.”

What would you say to him? I think you’d say, “It’s not God’s responsibility to stop you from stealing; no, that responsibility is on you. Only you can turn from this sin.” It sounds obvious and yet that’s how many Christians treat their sexual sin. They kept praying that God would automatically remove it with no effort on their part.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I believe in prayer. Pretty much every day I pray that God would keep me pure. But nowhere in the Bible does it say, “If you pray, this sin will magically be erased from your life.” After He forgave her, Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). So it is your responsibility to stop—to seek accountability, to fast, to pray, to guard, to flee, to be radical. Only you can turn from sexual sin; no one can do it for you. Once I understood this, I really started to see the fruits of true repentance in my life.