In heart of man are sinful natures. Hatred, anger, adulterous mind, and jealousy are the examples. The desire to act upon these natures and commit sins is 'the lust of the flesh'. When the lust of the flesh is activated, people commit sins through words and deeds (1 John 2:16). Now we will look into how to find out these sinful natures, throw them away, and thereby resemble the Lord. When it comes to understanding the lust of flesh, 'feeling' is a major factor that contributes to its formation. Today let us delve into the 'feeling' and how to change it.
'Sinful Nature' Planted in Heart with 'Feeling'
Today many people fail to cut themselves off from drugs, pornography, and violent games. They become addicted to them. One of the reasons is that 'feeling' was planted in their hearts when they experienced such bad things for the first time. The feeling is new and tempting, so they want to feel it again and more strongly next time, which leads to addiction.
This is similar to a seedling of rice in a rice paddy. When it is planted deep, it is hard to pull it out; but it is easy to be picked out otherwise. The same principle can be applied to sinful natures.
Suppose one watches an obscene movie. While its scenes are entered and saved in the memory device in the brain, its sinful nature is planted in heart with a certain degree of feeling. If a person sees another obscene scene, the feeling previously planted is retrieved. It is not easy to remove improper feelings that were firmly planted, and even more difficult to delete feelings that are planted with strong emotions.
When a sinful nature is planted in the heart, a follow-on feeling is planted; the opposite is also true. When the nature is activated, the feeling is retrieved. With anger, people may feel like something is boiling over in them and running over and out of them. In jealousy, they might find freezing coldness in them. When they are arrogant, they might feel they are superior to everything. With adulterous mind, they feel something moving in them. When these feelings are brought back up, it may lead you to commit sins.
Sinful Natures Must Not Be Planted
You may know what anger and hatred are like. If you do not have anger in your heart, however, no feeling related to it is recalled. You cannot burst into anger. If you have no hatred, you do not have any hatred-related feelings, and you cannot hate anybody. It shows how important it is for sinful natures and following feelings not to be planted in your heart. In addition, you should try to plant 'good feelings'.
Let's suppose you felt sorrow and pain when you saw somebody get what you wanted to have. Such feelings lead in causing you to have greed, jealousy, and hatred planted in your heart as sinful natures. Then, when you see anybody who has more than you do, the feeling may be brought back and you may hate and envy him or her.
On the other hand, say you were taught by your parents to feel joy and happiness for others when others had more than you. So, you planted good feelings when others were happy. Then, you may keep feeling good when you see others have better things than you, and you may even want to share what you have with others.
As said, parents should set a good example for their children. If they argue and burst into anger every day, although they tell their child to be a 'good person', he may have fear and anger in his heart.
Only when parents joyfully live their Christian lives with hope for New Jerusalem can their child plant a good feeling about faith and Heaven. Their happiness may make him think, "New Jerusalem must be a very good place because my parents are so happy with hope to go there." If the parents seem to have hard times and feel burdened, the child may think, "It may be really hard to go to New Jerusalem." Then, the child may lose hope for New Jerusalem.
Change Negative Feelings into Good Ones
If you keep thinking, 'Why is he acting like that? I don't understand. I don't like him,' you cannot but hate him.
If you really want to throw away hatred, you should try to put yourselves in others' shoes and interpret their intention in goodness. If you continue to try, your bad feelings may become weak and finally you will not have hatred against them.
When you try to cast away hatred, greed, jealousy, judgment, and condemnation, you should substitute them with good feelings. When it comes to certain sinful natures such as betrayal, deceitfulness, lying, adulterous mind, and hot-temper, you should hate having them.
Let's say your wife is walking and other men keep glancing at her. You must be very upset. If you were to look at a woman like they do, how dirty you'd feel! In this way, you could realize how filthy adulterous minds are. By trying to feel bad about sinful natures, you can quickly throw them away.
People would not be able to realize how filthy sinful natures in heart are if they did not experience relativity during the cultivation on the earth.
However, sins and evil are so rampant that people are used to committing sins and having feelings accompanied by them. They have become addicted to the feelings and have been caught in sinful natures. Therefore, it is very important for you to cut yourself from the worldly sins and evil in your Christian lives.
Thus, all of us should realize how evil, dirty, and filthy the feelings that come from sinful natures are through this process of human cultivation. By understanding it and trying to achieve the good and pure heart of the Lord, you can recover the image of God that has been lost due to sins.
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