Don’t Fight a Two-Front War with Sin

Let’s admit something: neither you nor I are as holy as we should be. Our sins, sinful tendencies, and imperfections abound and attack us from all sides. At the beginning of our conversion or return to the faith, it was easy to harness our great enthusiasm and zeal to fight off temptation from all sides and to feel like we were winning the spiritual fight with the ease of a guy pulling off the one-man band. However, initial zeal soon wears off and, one by one, we make little compromises with sin; and soon we’re left feeling defeated and overwhelmed by the truth of what we are (or aren’t).

The problem is that, very often, we’re trying to do too much at the same time. We have the impression – especially as men – that God demands perfection from us and we need to produce it right now. And so we try to fight the various sins that plague us all at once – and when we discover that our will is too weak to keep up the herculean effort that a multiple-front war demands, we determine that the whole holiness business must just not be for us. Read full article