The Power

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A bite from the dessert of my day. A hard one to swallow, as I have walked this road far too often myself.

Many Christians think stoicism is a good antidote to sensuality.

It isn’t.

It is hopelessly weak and ineffective.

And the reason it fails is that the power of sin comes from its promise of pleasure

and is meant to be defeated by the superior promise of pleasure in God,

not by the power of the human will.

Willpower religion,

when it succeeds,

gets glory for the will.

It produces legalists,

not lovers.

~ John Piper, A God-Entranced View of All Things; The LIfe and Legacy of Jonathan Edwards

How great art Thou, Oh God of all, so merciful, so gracious and relentless in Thy pursuit of our deliverance from sin into Thy inexpressible life-giving joy.

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