You are describing progress, not living in sin like one did before being saved.
According to stats, many men on this forum are probably viewing porn including pastors and leaders so let's use that as a realistic example. Are you viewing it just like you (anybody) did before the day you say you got saved and you just click into it as just part of what you do in life? Or is there more than just a fight going on in the Spirit and you have this pattern of three steps forward two steps back in your spiritual battle against it?
You'll still get to where you're going in that kind of struggle. Try it. Walk to the kitchen from your living room taking 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Then try it taking no steps at all. The 1st way shows you are in progress toward the goal. The 2nd way shows you aren't even in the running. Now ask yourself, people, which one am I? The point is, am I progressing in my spiritual battle with sin, or am I content in my old life and making no progress at all because salvation is not by works? Examine yourself. Take it to Jesus if you don't like what you see. That's what he's there for. And leave the messenger alone. Not <you> Bill, I'm talking to 'you' collectively.
For me the biggest concern is that on threads like this is that it is all too easy for us to assume what either side of the equation leads to.
Works save, therefore legalists.
Works don't save therefore using grace as a license to sin.
Yet in between this is judgement of each other.
I agree with what you say "Three steps forward and two backwards" progress.
What really really worries me is that people only see the two steps backwards and thats it.
That is as a result of people saying three steps forward all the time.
That attitude just lays burdens and condemnation on someone, they don't see the 3 forward, only the 2 back.
What really hurts me is that on both sides of the equations we judge, without actually coming alongside people.
Of course we can't be fully effective in doing this on this site, a virtual site.
But in the real world, with people we know?
I was written off by many when I stopped going to church. Yet those who wrote me of were looking at the external and had no interest in the internal. What was actually going on in me that caused me to stop going to church.
I never lost my faith in Jesus.
I was a messed up cookie.
I was a hurting person with many issues as a result of my past.
I won't go into the details as to how I was restored but will say that it was someone whom in did not know suddenly came alongside me. Did not condemn me. Just walked with me.
As a result God healed me of my gambling addiction. Every day for 15 years it was severe, at times in a gambling place and did not know I was. I prayed all those years to stop.
The issue was not the gambling but the cause.
When the cause was dealt with the result was dealt with.
It can be reversed.
I need to be perfect in order to be loved.
If I'm not perfect then God will not love me and I'm toast.
For me it was I'm not lovable first stop.
All we see is the external.
Jesus sees the internal.
Are we willing to come alongside people to truly know what is going on, or do we write them off?
Do we walk in love or condemnation?
