I think the greatest victory the devil has on us today is the way Christians today accept the “good things of the world”.
Contrast us with the 1800’s. You didn’t have any bit of Hollywood, carnal entertainment, worldly music at every store, junk in your mail box, junk in your inbox, junk on your jukebox, etc.
Today we have wicked sins that those that don’t go to church do or those that leave the church do. You might not agree but those include drinking, smoking, gambling, pornography, bars and strip clubs.
Yet the church has it’s own list of acceptable places of the world. Each church is different, but we become Pharisees in deciding which is sin and which isn’t and it is the conformity to one’s church that sets the standard to what is holy and what is not. Many Baptist churches see a woman in a skirt as holy no matter what else she does. However, a holy Godly woman will want to look feminine and modest and I believe a dress does that the best.
But to make it a checklist for holiness makes us conform to a standard and not to Christ. 1000 pianos all fine tuned to the master Piano will be perfectly tuned to each other. Many circles allow certain sins without question, as I commented before.
I struggle with all this because it seems you are allowed to enjoy all the good things of the WORLD (Disney, pro sports, pigging out, sugar addiction, etc) but if you instead struggled with the BAD things of the WORLD before you were saved, YOU ARE NOT WELCOMED TO ADDRESS THIS WITH THE BRETHREN. You seem allowed to do whatever is acceptable sin, but being tempted with unacceptable sin is taboo. “We don’t want to hear about it because it might reveal we don’t have all the answers.”
So you have today many Christians living one way on Sunday, another way on Monday. We need to be real with ourselves and the world.
Are we secure enough in what we believe that we can allow others to fail, fall, and frustrate us?
And do we have the patience to carry them to victory, or show them the way ourselves? Or do we just get them to switch to the acceptable sins?