Sometimes I think I've experienced every hook that's available... there are so many hooks... alcohol...drugs...cigarettes... sex... porn... womanizing... I can't tell you how thankful I am that that there is  a way out... that Jesus can and did set me free from all of that... but you know something... the worst hook of all... wasn't all that stuff... the worst of them all was the religious hook...there are all kinds of them too...so many religious hooks... more on those another time...

We think it is all the bad things that need to stop... much more important is the need to stop all the good things we do... somehow... we have bought the lie in religion that what we need to do is to stop doing all the bad things and start doing all the good things... what a viscious lie... Satan doesn't care if we do good things or bad things... as long as we function with his engine powering us... our natural man is his engine... which is why that natural man has to go...

The tree that our natural man feeds on is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... where we can be as God... where we can play God...where we can decide what is good....and what is evil... what is right... and what is wrong...

In religion I taught that Jesus died in order that we might live... we receive eternal life and then we can go to heaven when we finally die... we expressed that as "He died... so we can live"...

We need to take that a step further... and start to say that... "we need to die... so He can live"...