Three Groups

There are three different scenarios when it comes to believers and sin.

First, there are professing believers who overlook sin because of hardened hearts. 

Second, there are professing Christians who believe the lie that we are all by nature sinners, that the blood of Jesus is powerful enough only to free us from the penalty of sin, but not from bondage to it. 

These two groups, being given to sin, are like kryptonite in the body of Christ, bringing weakness to the entire body because of their willful disobedience to Christ. 

However, there is a third group—believers who are in a struggle to get free from sin [and recognize that freedom from sin is possible and promised through Christ].

- “Killing Kryptonite by John Bevere

The Night of the Spirit

When we come out of Egypt we are called by God to freedom, total freedom, true freedom, eternal freedom.

But in order to become free - what a task, what a struggle, what a purging!

Liberation from the clutches of the senses is no small thing for sensual creatures like us.

To reach the "night of the senses" - the time when we become rulers of our own passions and are able to resist the extravagances of taste in physical pleasure - that take some fasting!

But this is nothing yet. This is only the beginning-baby stuff, you might say.

There's more to come!

There is another darker, much more painful night.

It is the "night of the soul", the night in which we chatterboxes have to learn to keep still.

We who are so ready to ask for things - now we shall not dare to ask.

We fall silent, thunderstruck with the grandeur that confronts us: God.

The night of the spirit is the mature ability of a human being to love God in the dark, to except the design even without seeing it, to bear the distance without complaining, even when love thrusts us towards him until we writhe with longing.

- From Why, O Lord? by Carlo Carretto