The thing about wrong, bad, and evil thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds is, what they do to us, our attitudes, and our behavior. When we sin, it doesn’t just damage us at the moment of the sin, we get changed in the way we think, feel, talk, and act. The sins we have allowed to come inside us can cause us to mistreat people, dislike them, lie to them, want revenge against them, and talk about them behind their back. These sins we have allowed to come inside us can cause us to lust after them, to lead THEM into sin, and to do things with them that hurts us and them. We must understand what wrong, bad, and evil do to us once the deed has been committed. It isn’t just the deed itself; it is what happens to us once it gets inside us.

Sin is like a cancer; one cell multiplies and grows; it starts replacing the healthy, normal cells. It isn’t a cell that produces beneficial things for our body; it is selfish and self-centered. Its whole purpose is to use the food and energy resources of our body for reproducing itself. Sin is like that; it only has one purpose. It is devoted to taking you away from healthy relationships. It pushes you into selfish, self-centered activities that have to be repeated over and over again. It tries to dominate your feelings, thoughts, words, and deeds. It isn’t until it is repented of, renounced from your life, and released from your behavior that you get healed.

Wrong, bad, and evil are alive; they grow like weeds in your yard. Weeds plant themselves; dandelions have little round balls of fuzzy seeds that get blown by the wind. Large quantities of these little airborne seeds flow from one plant and infect your and your neighbors’ yards. They don’t need to be hand planted like good plants. They will plant themselves and spread all over. This will keep happening until something is done that eliminates them. They must be actively resisted and removed. This is what Jesus is wanting to do in your life. One of the reasons He is taking you through these studies is so you can get the “weeds” removed from your life.

Dandelions can be sprayed with certain poisons and they will kill them. Once a dandelion plant is killed, it can’t produce any more seeds; but, if it already has seeds produced, they must be captured and disposed of. Jesus’ blood killed the reproduction of those sins you committed. But, they still have the potential of doing damage in your life. You must allow Him to set you free from the damage they have already done to you. You have reacted to your life of sin and have put up barriers, walls, defenses, and attitudes that are trying to protect you. You must not protect yourself; you must give these protections up and allow Jesus to heal you.

You have habits, addictions, and a lifestyle that have developed from your life of sin. You have beliefs, philosophies, and principles you are living by that aren’t from Jesus’ Bible. They are governing, regulating, and manipulating your behavior. Your thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds are being formulated from these things that are resident inside you. For you to be set free from this developed lifestyle sin has formed in you, you need Jesus to set you free. He wants to give you habits, intense desires, and lifestyle patterns that are from Him.

If you had dirty hands, you could try to rub all that dirt off; or, you could use soap and water. It is amazing how much better it is to wash things off than trying to just rub them off. Plus, soap deals with the unseen things such as viruses and bacteria. When you allow the power of Jesus to flow into your heart and life, He can do what you have never been able to do. What if you allowed the character of Jesus to flow over all the things you have permitted to enter into your life? You could let the fruit of the Spirit wash out all your habits, addictions, and lifestyle characteristics. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Gal 5:22-23).

Your habits, addictions, and lifestyle characteristics are currently influencing your way of thinking. What if you allowed Jesus’ way of thinking to force out all of the ways you USED to think? Phil 4:8 (NIV) Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. You can only think about one thing at a time. If you are thinking Jesus-thoughts, then you can’t be thinking thoughts from your old way of thinking. Jesus’ power-attitudes of Galatians 5:22-23 and Jesus’ power-thoughts of Philippians 4:8 will crowd out your old way of living life.

Once you are made pure, you are able to use those things Jesus taught you in the Resistance Courses. He trained and empowered you to resist wrong, bad, and evil things. Plus, you will be able to add pure things into your life from those things Jesus taught you in the Submission Courses. Jesus taught and empowered you to submit to right, good, and righteousness. Jesus uses all these courses to help you get, keep, live, and mature in the Victorious Christian Life. He takes you from where you are and makes wonderful improvements through your relationship with Him and your exposure to the Bible. Purity will help you with your relationship with yourself, your friends, your business associates, your family, strangers, and with people you don’t like. The power of purity will so enhance who you are that people will love being around you.