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Good morning! Can I warn you about something this morning? I don't want to cause a stir, or get your day started off wrong, but I just wanted to take a moment and remind or warn you that the devil is after YOU! He wants your life! He wants to get you into deep sin. He wants your children to be drug addicts or something worse and he wants you to be the reason for it!

There are basically two types of sin that God's people struggle with. There is unrighteousness. That is the devils preference for all of mankind. He wants to get you involved in drugs, alcohol, pornography, adultery and other unrighteous works of the flesh that are wicked and unrighteous. This is unrighteous flesh and this is what the world struggles with. It is this type of sin that the devil wants God's people to struggle with.

But let's be honest with one another. The devil is just not going to be able to get very many of God's children into the flesh of unrighteousness. There are just not many believers out there, I would like to believe, that are going to have a consistent struggle with the unrighteous works of the flesh which are manifest and listed in Galatians.

However, there is another type of flesh that most Christians don't know anything about. It is not unrighteous flesh. There is no such thing as righteous flesh. If there is no such thing as righteous flesh and we have already discussed unrighteous flesh, then what other type of flesh might there be? I will tell you, it is the devils number one tool for God's people: self righteous flesh.

It is the ability and the agility to do right. But to do so all by yourself! It is attempting to live righteous without the Power of He who is Right! This is the sin in which the devil wants us to wallow. You see, wewill never fall into DEEP sin until we first wallow in SHALLOW sin! How does he get us to do such a thing?

Home movies! That's how. Very, very private movies that you watch some days, or all day or some days throughout the day. Your spouse, pastor, kids, employer or friends don't even know your watching these movies. They are the movies that make their home in your mind.

Satan will try to draw us into deep sin with such temptation that we are constantly fighting the deep sins of our past. Of course, we would never do such things that engulfed our past again, we, through these temptations may still fail to live victoriously righteous, for this battle with the sins of our past may constantly hound us with thoughts of unrighteousness.

We as developing Christians may very well have the intestinal fortitude to avoid doing them, but we struggle to have the spiritual maturity necessary to cast down these unrighteous imaginations. So, the temptation actually grows stronger, even though we are not engaging in it. Why? Though we are not engaging it, it does not mean we are not entertaining it.

An imagination is a stored image. How many of those does the average Christian possess? Most assuredly we have thousands of stored images that attempt to captivate our mind. A great majority of them are sins from the past that the devil stimulates through outside pressure (oppression) that we may hit the proverbial play rewind, play rewind, play rewind of our mind!

We may not be committing sin, but we are surely permitting sin. The Bible tells us that viewing our SINS (past or present) is still sin! James 1:14-16 dissected and defined tell us that "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust (desires), and enticed (instigated to evil)." The word own before the word lust is referring to our personal preferred desires. It is the sin that does so easily beset YOU! It is your personal "designer" desires. Everyone has sins of the mind that are their preferred meditation. For some it may be sexual lusts, others, it is a critical nature or a haughty spirit, for some it is greed. Others it may be pride. Still others may be discontent with their spouse or life in general. No matter your struggle, it has been designed for you but by you! It is your own professionally produced production. It is you "own lust". Others may struggle with it as well, but you have designed this desire for yourself and the movie clips of your mind that play these flicks are prepared and produced by you. However, James goes on to teach us what happens when we allow these critical, negative, competitive, proud, haughty or pornographic negatives to be fully developed by our mind.

Verse 15 explains "Then when [our designer desires] hath conceived" The word conceived means to frame. Thus, he is referring to a sin of sorts that we frame in the mind. What are these little movies we view? Individual frames of our film of filth!

To others you may be able to say "I ain't doing nothing wrong! I sing in the choir, I work the bus route, I give and I sing real loud in church. I read my Bible, I don't even watch TV!" No, you don't watch TV. But you watch dirty, filthy movies all day from the memory of your mind. Ladies, I am not speaking of just some twisted man's viewing of his immoral thinking? I am speaking of all thinking! How about your critical nature, or your pessimism toward your husbands authority? How about the competitive nature you struggle with? When you dress for services on Sunday, how much thought goes into looking better than the other ladies. You may not want to be noticed by another man, but do you want to be noticed by those men's ladies?

I am not a woman, so I don't know what sins women may struggle with, but I do know this much, as I counsel and learn more about the sins of the mind, I see the thoughts of our ladies are becoming more and more likeminded with the men all the time! The devil is having a hey day at the picture shows!

I know this is not popular theology, but it is Bible. If the devil can't get you to live in sin, he will get you to look at your SINS! This my friend is living in sin for when your designer desires are framed in the mind we have failed to cast down that imagination. Thus, when that imagination. left to itself to play and rewind as oft as it "thinks, wants or feels like it", it has brought "forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."

I join James' warning with this concluding phrase "Do not err, my beloved brethren" (or sistren!).

A QUESTION FOR TODAY'S MEDITATION: "Am I struggling with a competitive nature with any of my fellow Christians?" If so, why? Seriously answer that question and you will see that you are engaging in a sin of the mind that must be confessed to God and repented from by you. This repentance must come from a refusal to dwell on those thoughts, not just a willingness not to act upon those thoughts.