Apicontent

Coping or Cure?

People naturally seek treatments suitable to the causes they believe are driving their bad behavior. Today, people seem to rely most upon such methodologies as medical treatment, psychotherapy, and education.

Coping skills like those offered by such treatments can be effective in the sense that they may squelch the conscience and help people feel better temporarily. But a cure, not coping, is what you want, is it not? Certainly a cure is what we want to help you find.²

In Soul Prescription we refer to sin frequently as “sickness.” But we do not mean by this that our sin is something for which we do not bear responsibility. We are not victims of our sin; we are the perpetrators. The analogy of sickness is useful because it describes the way our spiritual system becomes disordered through sin.

We are not interested in helping you live with your problem—we want you to be fundamentally transformed. And a cure like this is possible only if we get to the heart of the problem.

Long ago, when Israel’s prophets and priests failed to deal with the people’s rebellion against God, the Lord said of these religious professionals,

“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” —Jeremiah 6:14, NIV

Learning a lesson from this, we must do more than administer superficial treatments for our chronic behavior problems expressing our sinful nature. We cannot delude ourselves into thinking we are at a place of spiritual peace when actually war is raging in our hearts.

As Jesus approached the end of His time on earth, He told His disciples, “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn’t like the peace the world gives” (John 14:27). In part, He was saying that there is a kind of worldly peace. This is the peace that can come through coping strategies that make us feel better for a while. But Jesus’ peace is qualitatively different. It is based on real, heart-level change that can come only through the work of the Holy Spirit. In the words of one Old Testament prophet, “righteousness will bring peace” (Isaiah 32:17).

Unfortunately, it is easy to mix up the two kinds of peace: worldly and godly.

You may find that going to a counselor or a doctor will give you some relief or help you address contributing factors to your problems. But what we are doing with Soul Prescription is something much more basic and direct: we want to help you deal with the heart of your problem. And you know what that is. It is sin.

Sin really is the heart of the problem, because in the end each of us is responsible for our own behavior. Regardless of the influences that may be acting upon us, sin is an act of the will. We choose to do what we know is wrong. As John Bunyan—author of The Pilgrim’s Progress—said, “There is no way to kill a man’s righteousness but by his own consent.” This is true even when the sin has become habitual.

We have to tell you (in case you do not already know) that it is never safe to try to live with a sin problem. Sin is like a cancer: it grows in seriousness over time. A little entertaining of lust, for example, can grow to encompass pornography use, adultery, and even crimes like rape. Furthermore, sin is like a contagion: it spreads from one person to another. If your problem is a quick temper, your lashing out at a coworker might cause her to overreact to her child at home. Then the child becomes upset and acts cruelly to a playmate. And so on.

If you throw a rock in a still pond, the ripples spread out and gradually die away. But if you commit a sin, the ripples it sends out may not die out; they may continue spreading within your own life or the lives of those around you. The harm they can do is incalculable. Now, we ask you, is this not a good reason to seek real healing for your sin problem and not just learn to live with it?

Soul Prescription is not for people who want to dodge their sin problem or merely cover it up or make it better but not get rid of it. It is for people who are sick and tired of their sin problem and are filled with a drive to get rid of it once and for all. They are ready, at last, to say, “I can’t do this on my own. I need God’s help to deal with my sin.” This approach requires courage and faith, but it has the virtue of dealing with the real problem.

Select the right arrow (below) to continue reading Chapter 1. Dealing with Behavior Problems.

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If you feel yourself infected by a sinful habit of mind, body, or spirit, you are probably eager to be healed of that habit and have your life transformed. If so, your desire shows that your conscience is still alive and that the Holy Spirit is working inside you to will what God wills. What you are feeling is a godly restlessness—a dissatisfaction with the things of this world and a yearning for the things that are from above.

The Soul Prescription process is designed to help you achieve the spiritual health you desire. Before we get to the prescription for your soul, however, we want to present another key idea: you not only need to be cleansed of your sin, but at the same time you need to be filled with holiness.

We may get rid of a compulsive thought, attitude, or behavior temporarily, perhaps through an exertion of willpower or by some type of therapy. That’s good as far as it goes. Yet if we do not cooperate with God to supply a new thought, attitude, or behavior to take its place, the sin is likely to come back into our lives with a vengeance.¹ What a sad outcome! As Peter said, “When people escape from the wicked ways of the world by learning about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up with sin and become its slave again, they are worse off than before” (2 Peter 2:20). They are worse off than before because they have fallen more deeply into a sin habit.

In the past, have you had trouble making your resolutions to quit sinning stick? Maybe it is because you concentrated on the negative part of the equation (eliminating sin) and forgot about the positive part (adding holiness). Erwin Lutzer, senior pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, has rightly said, “We cannot say no to temptation without saying yes to something far better.”

It is like defeating cancer: doctors not only want to destroy the cancerous cells but also boost the body’s ability to replenish healthy cells. We need to tear down sin habits in our lives and replace them with virtue habits.

If we leave a vacancy in our spiritual lives, it will be filled with something. Either the same sin will return (perhaps grown more powerful) or another will come in to take its place. If you quit getting drunk, for example, you might start overeating. Instead of that kind of setback, let’s allow holy qualities to flow in and fill the space vacated by a sinful practice. That is the biblical way.

¹ In this article, when we refer to “cooperating” with God, we mean acknowledging that He provides the answers in His Word, the Bible, and then submitting to those commands.

Select the right arrow (below) to continue reading Chapter 2. The Secret to Lasting Health.

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