Gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Ephesians 2:3 (NIV)
If the fires have burned low in your marriage, expect your sinful nature to produce thoughts about divorce. Something within you will say, “You deserve better. There’s another person out there for you.” If you are discouraged in ministry, expect the sinful nature to produce thoughts about quitting. The sinful nature will say, “There’s something else you could do.”
The sinful nature will always produce these cravings, strong desires, and intense longings. The Christian life is a constant battle against the impulses of sin that remain in our flesh. If you are a Christian, your sin is forgiven, but it has not yet been expelled. You are now involved in a lifelong struggle against the desires of the sinful nature.
The Scottish preacher Thomas Boston, in his book Human Nature in Its Fourfold State describes how the imagination enables the sinner to indulge the cravings of his heart. He wrote the following words in 1729, long before the days of cable TV, the Internet, or the camera…
[The sinful mind]…supplies the lack of real objects to the corrupt heart, that it may make sinners happy at least in the imaginary enjoyment of their lusts. The corrupt heart feeds itself with imagination-sins. The unclean person is filled with speculative impurities. The covetous man fills his heart with the world, though he cannot get his hands full of it. The malicious person fills his mind with acts of revenge. The envious man…beholds with satisfaction, his neighbor laid low.
Every lust finds the corrupt imagination a friend to it in time of need. This the heart does, not only when people are awake—but sometimes even when they are asleep; whereby it comes to pass that those sins are acted in dreams which their hearts pant after when they are awake.
Can you identify a recent time when you allowed your imagination to run wild by indulging your cravings?
