"Why Do I Sin?"

By Lee A. Bell

This book addresses the eternal problem of sin, which we ALL are guilty of; its causes and its effects. It is zeroed in on sexual sin specifically.

Chapter Headings include: Humanatomy 101: Basic Human Sinful Behavior, Why is it so hard to Stop Sinning? Temptation, Desires and Lust, Sin and Freedom of Choice, Knowing your enemies: Satan, Your own heart and your flesh. The Spirit of Bondage and the Familiar Spirit.

Specific topics addressed include but are not limited to: The Outer Man, the Mind's Eye, Thoughts, Fantasies, Reprobate Mind, The Outer Man, Your Conscience, Learned Behavior, Blaming God, Endless Cycle of Sin, Confess and Repent. Sex's Role, Sex Drive, Complete Sexual Domination, Masturbation/ Adultery and Fornication, Homosexuality and Lesbian sex, Sexual Orientation, Can you be a Homosexual/Lesbian and still be a Christian? Suicide, Iniquity and Transgressions, Intent to Sin, Bondage, Sin and Guilt, False Repentance, Renewing your Mind, the Eyes of Satan, Tactics of War, Goals of the Enemy, Keys to the Kingdom, Binding and Loosing, Hearing God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee A. Bell
• Release date: Jan 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393210320

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE: HUMANATOMY 101: BASIC HUMAN SINFUL BEHAVIOR

Psalm 139:14 ...for I am fearfully and wonderfully made...

A little bit about us: God created us as extremely complex creatures. There are an estimated one trillion cells in the human body. We are made up of an outer man (or woman) which is our physical body: flesh, bone, skin, hair, blood, muscle, tendons, ligaments, organs, etc... and our inner man. The inner man is our spirit and our soul. The spirit is the housing of our conscience, our intelligence, and our will. The soul is the home of our desires, passions, emotions, and human feelings. It can be said that the spirit is that human quality that thinks, while the soul is that part that feels. The spirit and soul are intertwined so intricately that they are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Both components of the inner man are immortal and live on after death, while the outer, physical man will eventually die.

Although the inner and outer man co-exists in the same place at the same time, they don't play well together...at all. They butt heads constantly, each seeking one thing: total control. The sinful nature of man is found in the outer man, while the inner man wants to be good and do what’s right. The human flesh is selfish while the human spirit wants to be selfless. They are two powerful, but opposite forces in your life. The problem is they don't share power well. Each wants to dominate and will fight to the death until a winner is determined. You don’t have to look at the world news to find a war; there is one raging inside of you right now.

THE OUTER MAN: THE HUMAN BRAIN  *

If life is in the blood, then all life function is in the brain. When we consider the miracle that is the human body, then the mind is far and away its masterpiece. The human mind is a miracle of design, engineering, and efficiency. The closest thing we have on earth that can be compared to it is a supercomputer. Even that falls well short. The brain is capable of processing  .1 quadrillion instructions per second (1,000 million, million). It controls both the upper and lower human actions, which are all the conscious and subconscious activities and body functions. The subconscious actions are involuntary and function without as much as a recognized thought from us. A few of these would be a heartbeat, respiration, digestion, muscle movement, the function of all the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The brain houses intelligence and memory and controls all thinking, reason, logic, and abstraction and does calculations as well as executes subjectivity, awareness, perception, curiosity, and balance. It manages stress, hunger, and thirst, language and pronunciation, syntax, spelling, and grammar. It also regulates body temperature constantly. Emotions and feelings such as joy, happiness, fear, shyness, etc... are already fully developed in us at birth. It recognizes danger, pain, and love. It reacts to reflexes and triggers the flight or fight survival function. It generates dreams while you sleep and imaginations while awake.

It is made up of 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) although the brain itself cannot feel pain. This in itself is amazing! This is the same number of stars in our galaxy! You could fit 30,000 neurons on the head of a pin. In a newborn baby’s brain, neurons develop at a rate of 250,000 per minute! Additionally, there are 1,000 trillion connections within the mind. A new connection is formed each and every time you recall a memory or have a new thought. We average about 70,000 thoughts a day, depending on activity and circumstances. (Sorry, can't tell you who stopped to count these). Even if you are daydreaming, something is always going on in your mind. Did you know that there are 400 miles of blood vessels in your brain, which uses 25% of all the oxygen taken into your body?

While awake, the human brain generates between 9 and 24 watts of electrical power: enough to light a light bulb. (The Matrix movie was right by golly!) You've heard doctors use terms like short-circuited or shorted out when referencing different medical diseases or problems of the mind, nervous system, muscles, etc... right? Given the fact that the brain actually does produce current, these terms may literally be spot-on accurate.

While you are sleeping, your brain directs your body to produce a hormone that may prevent you from acting out your dreams in the physical world, in effect, leaving you paralyzed temporarily.

The brain kicks in every time we blink our eyes, which is between 19,000 to 20,000 times a day. It keeps everything illuminated mentally so the world does not go dark on us when we blink.

* Brain facts contributed by BrainFacts.org  www.brainfacts.org

For all its marvel, wonder, and just plain awesomeness, the human mind is also capable of making very stupid choices and decisions. In fact, it's amazing sometimes, that given the information that goes into it, that we can make such foolish choices. Some of these stem from sources like I.Q., learning ability or disability, physical damage, environment, stress, medical conditions and factors, lack of life experience, etc... but many, many bad decisions are just made out of selfishness- No matter what the consequences are, this sin will make me feel better and give me pleasure. I’m goin’ for it! Some decisions are purely internal while others are influenced by evil, outside forces.

***KEY THOUGHT*** (1/1) Satan recognizes the power of the brain and targets it specifically and intentionally.

He starts when we are very young and literally tries to possess us; possibly even at the point of conception. Your mind is like the steering wheel in a car: turn the wheel and the car has no choice but to follow and obey. It goes in the direction the wheel is turned. Your body responds to your brain in the same way.

***KEY THOUGHT*** (1/2) The devil knows that the whole human body doesn't have to be corrupted or controlled, only the mind.

Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? (1 Cor. 5:6). If evil can manage to control your mind, you don’t really have a fighting chance. Once the mind is corrupt and there is no human desire to change it back, there is little hope for the spiritual future of that individual. Evil recognizes this and will try to replace the desire to do good with the desire to sin. This is truly the original replacement theology. If Satan or unclean spirits are indeed able to penetrate or infiltrate (possess) our bodies, then they can certainly do the same to our minds. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that they can influence or even cause the short-circuits I spoke of just a minute ago? Could they block electrical senders and receivers within our minds? We would certainly interpret this as some kind of malfunction in the brain or body akin to a disease. What if they were able to do this at the biological or cellular level?

Although much is known scientifically and medically about the brain, so much more is still unknown. I have heard testimony, albeit years ago, of a Spirit-filled Christian blessed with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (discerning of spirits specifically), walking into a psychiatric ward at a hospital, recognizing which evil spirit was possessing an individual and specifically casting that spirit out by name in the name of Jesus. Mental illness, Bipolar Disease, paranoia, schizophrenia, and psychological problems and diseases instantly disappeared, and patients walked out of there by droves afterward, after being cleared medically! How many millions of people worldwide don't really need antidepressants and antipsychotic medicines and pills; maybe they don't really need a straitjacket or to be locked up in an eight-foot by an eight-foot padded cell. Maybe they really don't need electric shock treatments or a frontal lobotomy. Maybe what they really need is a good, Spirit-filled Christian electrician.

Your brain is considered part of the flesh although its composition is much different. It co-exists and interacts with your flesh and physical body every second of every minute of every day, even when you sleep. They are inseparably linked. When you strongly desire and lust after sinful, fleshly pleasures it is literally interpreted by your brain as physical hunger and need, just as a starving man with a completely empty stomach hunger for food. When you intentionally seek out sin you are trying to satisfy this hunger and feed your empty stomach. You can’t help but know that you are doing this and so there is no excuse for not recognizing it as a fact. You need to know that you are in danger of backsliding at this time. This sinful hunger takes place in the brain, however, not in your belly. The only way to shut this down is to crucify your flesh including AND ESPECIALLY your mind. You do this by renewing your mind. The object of renewing your mind is to replace physical, sinful hunger with SPIRITUAL hunger. We need to desire and yes, even lust after, the things of the Kingdom of God, not fleshly, earthly pleasures. I AM the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger (for physical pleasures); and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.

This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and NOT DIE. (Jn. 6:35, 50). If you eat of the bread of sin (by giving in to temptation and sin) you will die spiritually, but if you eat of the Bread of Life you will live."

As we move forward, I will show you how to begin to hunger after Jesus, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Word; how to hunger after obedience and righteousness. Every Christian needs to be spiritually hungry, not sinfully hungry. Some of you simply need to acknowledge that you are not in control of your sexual urges, desires, lusts, or your own body. Most of you know this already; you are probably reading this book for help after all. But some of you are in denial.

In Romans 7:21-25, the Apostle Paul tells us that he was not a willing slave to sin: I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. This is a kind of mental law whereby the brain and will of a person disagree with and fails to consent to God's requirements and statutes. v22, For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: (my spirit and my soul). v23, But I see another law in my members (flesh), warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. He concedes that the mental law which controls his flesh is winning. Essentially, he is a slave to it.

However, in verses 24-25, Paul finds a new master: O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this (spiritual) death? I thank God through JESUS CHRIST (The Word) our Lord. So then with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh (I serve) the law of sin. Here Paul acknowledges that two different laws are operating and competing with each other within his life at the same time. If the Apostle Paul struggled with this, don't feel bad because you do too.

THE MIND'S EYE

I will use this term several times in this book. Many Christian circles are familiar with it, but for those of you who are not, some information. Whether you know it or not, you use your mind’s eye every day. Those who understand it, take better advantage of it than those who do not. We could also call it by other names as it encompasses and incorporates several areas including your mental perception of objects and/or concepts, memory, daydreams, fantasies, imagination, faith, or even a combination of the last two, faith imagination. It’s worth noting that each of these can be different, or used in combination with the others.

Fantasies and imaginations are made REAL by your mind's eye. This is how God can and does classify looking upon a woman to lust after her (Matt. 5:28) as a sin. You are seeing her with your physical eyes, but your mind’s eye sees her as a sexual object. Women: this pertains to you too! Your mind retrieves, then engages, and activates all the sensations, feelings, emotions, and pleasures stored in your memories and emotions of sexual sin, and allows (some would say makes) you relive them in your mind. If and when you apply them to the person you are seeing, you then begin to fantasize about them sexually. Your mind makes it real. It then literally becomes sin to you.

Dreams fit in well here also. While one dreams, all the people and events in it (even if they could not possibly go together in real life) become as real as if they were actually taking place. To the mind they are real; we see them with our mind's eye. Have you ever had a detailed dream about someone you’ve never met or known before? I have. Did you notice that your mind created a detailed face for this person? Sometimes, specific height and weight, details like the shape and length of the nose, eye color, plucked eyebrows, lipstick, etc... How can it do that if you’ve never met them?

If you have a naughty dream in which you are having sex with another person, your sleeping body cannot tell the difference between a dream and reality. It believes it is actually engaging in sex, which often wakes that person up from their sleep (for various reasons). People often wake from pleasurable dreams with a smile on their faces and happiness in their hearts. Conversely, waking from a nightmare can leave you in tears, sweating, heart pounding, and adrenaline flowing in your veins. Unlike fantasies, which occur while you are awake, sinful dreams cannot be held against you.

There is a dark side of the mind’s eye which you need to be aware of. Induced fears and phobias become indistinguishable from reality in severe cases and can take over parts of the mind that control human actions. It is the imagination of pedophiles that drives them to do unspeakable things. Their mind legitimizes and then makes it ok for them to do such things. Their mind justifies it. Since it's ok for them to indulge in it, they dwell more and more upon it, until it totally consumes them.

The mind's eye does not always have to remain a villain, however. If you can tap into and harness it, you can use it as a powerful weapon against temptation, sin, and iniquity! Furthermore, the mind’s eye combined with released prayer (unwavering faith in prayer, spoken out loud to God) can and does cause God to move on our behalf. The mind's eye can actually play a part in changing our physical and spiritual circumstances here on earth, by reaching into the spirit realm and touching God! Your mind’s eye works very well with faith. Use it for your benefit.

You begin grooming your imaginations and your mind’s eye almost as soon as you open your physical eyes. Since your mind is uneducated and knows virtually nothing as a baby, your imagination fills in the blanks. As an infant, what the eyes see and ears hear provide most of our stimulation. What does a one-month-old lying on its back in the crib think about when it sees some lighted, rotating musical toy hanging above it? Must be the most marvelous miracle in the universe! You can sit a young child down with a couple of pots and pans and a spoon or some wooden blocks and he or she may play for hours. Your mind’s eye is vital to the growth of your brain. You practice and expand your imagination and mind’s eye for years and years as a growing child. It stays with you all your life, although some adults forget how to use it, it seems.

From the standpoint of commercial products, the likes of movies, videos, music, and television all try to use the mind’s eye of the viewer/listener. When you fully commit and accept it, then place yourself into the movie or music you can become emotionally involved. This creates a bond with the movie or music. That's our song! many couples say, the one that was playing when we fell in love! They then begin to relive the joy they found in each other as the song plays. This is also what happens when you fall into the sin bond age. You become linked and attached to it on a very personal level; you literally bond to it, whether you do so willingly or not. Some bonds are very hard to break, especially the ones that are harmful to us.

Jesus restored to you ALL that was lost in the Garden of Eden. If you can use your mind’s eye to see yourself regaining everything, it can all be yours!

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THOUGHTS

The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity. Ps. 94:11

The thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the wicked are deceit. Pr. 12:5

The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord: but the words of the pure are pleasant words. Pr. 15:26

***KEY THOUGHT*** 1/3 Thoughts are blueprints for action. In a fight for control over temptation and sin, you need to be more keenly aware of your thought life than others who already have the victory, or are oblivious altogether. When you perceive that your thoughts themselves are not Godly or honorable, you can bet the corresponding actions that follow them won't be either. This is why fantasizing about sex is deadly. In Mt. 5:28 above, you see a female that is sexually stimulating to you. This may immediately trigger sexual thoughts in your head.

***KEY THOUGHT*** (1/4) This is where the process needs to be stopped dead in its tracks. This is the vital target area that we are going to focus on.

Your own thoughts are a mirror; a direct and connected reflection of the treasure that is in your heart. Once you get your thought life under control, (and commit to it), your actions will follow. You need to replace the bad things you treasure in your heart with those that are good and pure and holy. What do you truly treasure? Make a list and be honest. List all the sinful things too. Ask yourself as a Christian, which of these needs to go away? If your problem is gambling, you need to quit thinking about it all the time. If you must dwell on gambling, think of the dice that the Roman soldiers tossed to try to win the robe that Jesus was wearing at the time of His crucifixion (Mk. 15:24). This will lead you to thoughts of Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us of a weapon from God for us to use in this area in 2 Cor. 10:3-5: For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: v4 (For the weapons of warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds) v5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." God placed this verse in His Word specifically for you at this time in your life! Note: it doesn't have to be your thought originally, it could be from evil. I will talk more about this later, but right now, you need to be aware of every evil thought going through your head, at least for a season until your mind is trained and under your control. You need to master your thoughts and your thought life by filtering out the garbage. People use Hepa filters to purify the air they breathe. Christians use a Word filter, the Word of God, to purify the thoughts in their heads. You need to filter every evil thought through God’s Word. How does it match up? In a fight for your mind, you will have to reject, rebuke, and cast out ALL evil thoughts.

***KEY THOUGHT*** (1/5) Temptation will ALWAYS PRESENT ITSELF TO YOU AS A THOUGHT IN YOUR MIND!

However, what stimulates this thought is almost always an outside source. (Memories count too, and could be described as recycled thoughts.) This is sometimes hard to recognize because the brain works at lightning-fast speeds. The sequence of events is almost always as follows:

1. You see, touch, hear, taste, or smell that which stimulates your mind or flesh. (You will note that temptations almost always involve your senses. However, you can also come up with your own stimuli, such as fantasies, daydreams, etc...)

2. In a flash, your brain recognizes and interprets it as good or bad, inviting or disgusting, etc... It does this at the subconscious level, without any active participation on your part. It is in control, almost as if it is a separate entity from yourself. If it doesn’t recognize the stimulation, it will try to categorize it the way it wants to.

But you need to know that you can train it to perceive things and events the way YOU wish. Example: Immediately upon seeing that cheesecake on TV, your mind recognizes and interprets it as delicious. It has stimulated you. The visual picture of it in your mind’s eye sends it on a memory search, which, when found, reminds you of how great it tastes, and how much it pleases your flesh (particularly your stomach). Your mind and memory bring to life! To the untrained mind, your first thought might be, I want that, followed directly by, it will make me happy! You may find yourself smiling without realizing it. These thoughts could be followed by, It's going on the grocery list, or in times of total surrender, a trip to the store right then and there. (Don’t forget the cherry topping!) To a trained mind that recognizes what is happening, the first thought instead might be, No, I'm already 50 pounds overweight and I don't need the extra calories, sugar, or carbohydrates! It is at this point, just after being stimulated and recognition takes place, that we need to zero in on. We need to change our thinking and therefore the response that follows. It is at this point where we need to have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) i.e., we need to think like and respond as Jesus would. WWJD? (What would Jesus do?) He is our perfect example. Would He give in to temptation or resist it? He would resist it, just as He did all other temptations that confronted Him, even if it seems to be a small or innocent temptation. Temptations don’t have to be huge to do damage. (Don’t get me wrong here, there can be no heaven above without cheesecake!)

Although greatly more modest than the women of our generations, Jesus saw the harlots and prostitutes of