May 15, 2025 • 16 mins
Pride. Greed. Anger. Envy. Sloth. Gluttony. Lust. These sins have endured since the Fall, but they don’t need to endure in a believer’s life. How can we drive out vice with Christlikeness as we learn to increasingly desire, discern, and practice what is good?
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Deadly-Sins-Embracing-Transform/dp/B0DLJR5WDS?
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:00):
Kurt and Kate mornings. Not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast too.
S1 (00:06):
The seven deadly sins are pride, greed, anger, envy, sloth, gluttony,
and lust. These sins have endured since the fall of
man in the garden. But here's the deal they don't
(00:28):
need to endure in a believer's life, right?
S2 (00:32):
And you know what they can mean more than you
think they mean. So even if you think you have
one of them or all of them under control, there
may be aspects of the virtues that, uh, that are
hurting you.
S1 (00:46):
We were, uh, I don't know. How do I describe
this conversation with pastor, uh, Professor Dan Doriani? Uh, we
were refreshed with, uh, he had a very refreshing way
to look at battling these these deadly sins. Various camera
angles causing us to view things in a way that
is not commonplace. And I think it was really helpful.
(01:10):
We hope you agree. Stick around for a few minutes
and take a listen. There's always a story behind the story.
The story behind the book. Why did you decide to
tackle the seven deadly sins?
S3 (01:23):
Well, there's two answers to it. Number one is I
was at a colloquy, which means a bunch of theologians.
And somebody said, And Dan's going to give a talk
in 20 minutes after our hour break. And I said,
excuse me. What? Nobody, nobody told me I was giving
a talk today.
S1 (01:39):
I thought I was oh, it's kind of like being
on this show, actually.
S3 (01:43):
Well, actually, I had some warning for the show, but
I thought, okay, I've got to give a talk. And
so I said, it's the easiest thing for me to
do is give my summary of the entire Christian life
the way I teach it, and an ethics class, biblical
ethics class at Covenant Seminary. And the essence of it
is Christ likeness, plus the spiritual disciplines driven by faith,
(02:06):
fueled by union with Christ also. We could call that
also the presence of the Holy Spirit, because they're they're
basically the same thing. To be united with Christ is
to be united with the Spirit of Christ. Right. So, um,
that that's what I spoke on for 20 minutes and
or 30 minutes, 20 minutes later and a bunch of
people said, where's that written down? And I said, it's not.
(02:27):
And and one thing led to another. And I decided
to write a book that starts with union with Christ,
because all virtue and all good behavior starts with knowing
Christ and having the power through union with him and
the Holy Spirit and Christian community to actually make progress.
(02:48):
Not by gritting your teeth or saying, oh, I got
to list all the laws and follow the laws. I'm
I'm a new creature, and it is actually possible for
me to live a new way.
S1 (02:57):
Yeah, we have to see it as being possible in Jesus.
That's that's the bottom line in Jesus through the power
of the Holy Spirit. Virtue. That's some people might think
that's an old fashioned word. I think that's a word
that we should be putting into the spotlight. It's important.
What do you think?
S3 (03:16):
Well, it is an old fashioned word. It's been around
for thousands of years, I think, you know, even even
before Christian theology existed, the Greeks were talking about the
great virtues of life. But it's a biblical concept, although
not every translation has it. The word is arete. And, uh,
passages like Second Peter chapter one, uh, says that God
(03:39):
has given us great promises, so that through them you
might become partakers of the divine nature. Now, if that's
not virtue, I don't know what is to participate in
God's love and kindness and grace and patience, and of course,
us Self-control. I don't like the word self-control because it
implies you are controlling yourself and your battle with yourself.
(04:01):
But maybe restraint is a good word because God does
restrain our worst impulses, and we also work to restrain
them as well. And then second, Peter goes on to say,
for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your
faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control, steadfastness, godliness,
(04:21):
brotherly affection, and love. So it is a biblical concept.
It is an old fashioned word, and not everybody likes
it because it sounds like an improvement program for the soul.
Kind of like you go to the gym to get
your body strong. We're going to do a few things
to make our ethical system strong, very self oriented. That's
(04:42):
the problem with it. Um, but we want to say
the essence of virtue is to be more and more
like God. And there's it's hard to object to that.
S1 (04:50):
Yeah, I totally agree. And morality never saved anyone. Virtue
getting it all right. Your behavior never saved anyone. What
saves us is the blood of the Lord Jesus. And
out of that, when you receive him as your Lord
and Savior by faith, out of that comes virtue. Everything
(05:15):
emanates from your relationship with Jesus.
S4 (05:19):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. We always
welcome a review with your thoughts and comments, and please
feel free to subscribe and follow us as well.
S1 (05:31):
How do you decide? Well, we're going to get a
bunch of these guys to actually write on one aspect
of the Seven Deadly Sins. How'd you come up with
the contributors?
S3 (05:42):
Well, there's two reasons. First of all, I want to
get younger writers writing, and several of the people here
are younger. That was part of it. Who never published
before or hardly published. But the truth is, I looked
at maybe I read power, read about ten books on
virtue and vice, and they all had a sameness of tone.
(06:02):
And I thought, I want different approaches. And so I
asked seven people. So I wrote three chapters, and there
are actually eight other chapters written by friends of mine
or people I know, maybe not close friends, but people
I knew would do well. And I wanted a variety
of perspectives. So I wrote on gluttony, but other people
wrote on sloth and lust and anger and greed. And
(06:25):
I have to say, one of them, Chris Gordon Christine,
is her proper name. But Chris Gordon said, I want
to write about lust. Lust seems to be a male problem.
We think lust is only for men, but women can
lust too, which is not just for her sexual lust,
but also lust for control and for prosperity and a
new house and that sort of thing. So I never
(06:46):
would have thought of it that way. Right. So Chris
gave me a fresh perspective on it. And a man
from your neck of the woods. Actually, Trent Castillo, who
lives in southwest Florida. A pastor there. What a terrific
chapter on sloth as essentially indifference to love of God
and neighbor that cripples you and makes you hopeless and
(07:09):
despairing and inert. And so you don't love people. So
I just I love the chapters because they came up
with so many things that I wouldn't have thought of.
I would have fallen into the sameness trap.
S1 (07:22):
I think that's a great point. That's wonderful. So from
Lust to Love, uh, Christine Gordon, let's go back to
that one. I am going to get to gluttony. Okay.
Just so you know. Yeah, sure. I'm putting you on notice. Uh,
but you kind of outline some of that. Yeah. We
don't really think about lust as being a problem for women.
You know what, though? This is on the increase when
(07:43):
it comes to when we see the studies pornography use
among women, even those who are believers. You know, Christian
women are struggling with this. This is just the unfortunately,
the nature of the beast in our culture. It's it's
very sad.
S3 (07:58):
Right? You're absolutely right. And one of the reasons why
she wanted to address it and said, hey, I'll take
that one, is because, as we all know, if you
say lust is a sexual lust. I mean, now is
a problem for men, and women are struggling with sexual lust.
They feel abnormal. I'm not allowed to talk about it.
Men are allowed to talk about struggling with lust. But
(08:19):
a woman saying, listen, women have this problem too. Let's
talk about it. Let's bring it into our open discourse.
We can we can discuss it with the friends, Christian
friends who shape us and give us hope in community.
And that was one of the reasons why she wanted
to write that chapter. But it's also true that she said,
(08:40):
lust for things and and lust for control are other
forms of lust. Yeah. So she's a serious writer. She
makes her case. Well.
S1 (08:47):
Yeah. All right, so let's talk about gluttony. And from
gluttony to Thanksgiving. How long has it been everybody? Let's
see a show of hands here among those who are
joining us this morning. Like, I can really see you.
I know we're radio, but it's just for the sake
of the conversation. How long has it been since you
(09:09):
have heard a sermon? Uh, heard a message at your
church on the sin of gluttony. When was the last time?
Is it something that has happened within the past week, year? Month? Years?
I would venture to say if we were to take
(09:29):
a highly unscientific poll here this morning.
S2 (09:32):
The only time we take.
S1 (09:33):
The only time we do take. Of course, we're on
a budget. What can I say? Uh, is the fact
that most of us would say, well, I can't remember
the last sermon I heard about gluttony. In fact, I
don't think I've ever heard one. There would be a
lot of people who would say that. Why do you
think this is?
S3 (09:50):
Well great question. And I think part of it is
because it's considered one of the acceptable sins. So, you know,
greed is quasi acceptable. There's somebody wrote a book on
acceptable sins a while ago. Good book. So.
S1 (10:05):
Oh, yeah. That was Jerry bridges who wrote that book. Right?
S3 (10:08):
He sure did. Yeah.
S1 (10:09):
Yeah.
S3 (10:10):
Yeah. So gluttony being, um, you know, an eater and
a drinker, of course, we don't indulge people who are
alcoholics and show up drunk at events in the church, but, uh,
we do not, um, we don't pay equal attention to
all the sins that exist. The other thing I think is,
you know, you don't want to make people feel bad.
(10:30):
I've been a pastor, I'm a professor, but I've been
a pastor for about half of my career. You don't
want to make people overweight feel bad. And and for
that reason, we avoid it. But the thing is. So I'm.
I've weighed the same amount for 50 years. I'm six
feet 180, and I am guilty of three of the
five marks of of gluttony, according to my own book,
(10:52):
my own research, which includes things like wanting it to
taste really good and complaining if it isn't, and wanting
to eat now and not wanting to wait for other
people and just not exercising that little bit of restraint
to wait 5 minutes or 7 minutes for somebody else.
S1 (11:10):
By the way, producer Mark, I just have to call
you out on that right now.
S4 (11:14):
Yeah. My eyes widened.
S1 (11:15):
A little bit. Yeah, yeah. He's okay. Okay, Dan. Continue on. Yes.
S3 (11:20):
Well, so I mean, the idea is we don't want
to make people feel bad, but the truth is, there
are different forms of of gluttony. And a person can
be very slender and according to the standards of the day,
be gluttonous. Let me put it a different way. We
would all say that Esau and the sons of Eli
are good examples of gluttony in the Bible. So Esau
sold his birthright for some food. Now we don't know
(11:43):
if he was thin or thick, but he wanted his
food and he wanted it now. And he despised everything
else because he wanted food and he wanted it now.
So the essence of gluttony is a desire to be
satisfied exactly the way I want to be satisfied. And
I want it now, and I want it to be perfect.
(12:03):
And that can lead to obesity. And obesity is a
real problem. But it's not just obesity. I think a
lot of pastors don't want to make people squirm in
their seats if they have a few extra pounds, or
maybe even a lot of extra pounds. Um, it is,
of course, an act of love to point out any sin.
I mean, that's that's what the Bible says, that, um,
(12:25):
we rebuke those whom we love. Now, we do it
in a kind way, but we do have to address
things like gluttony, because there are a form of self-indulgence.
And the whole idea of the deadly sins is they're
they're often gateways to others. And so for centuries and centuries,
pastors have said that if you eat too much, it
can lead to drinking too much, and it can lead
(12:47):
to not quenching your sexual appetites and other appetites, like
maybe the appetite for power or glory. So in general,
self-control or restraint in one area, it's kind of like
a muscle. You learn to restrain yourself in other areas.
S1 (13:04):
Wow, that's really insightful. I think that's if you connect
the dots on this. And at the end of the day,
we want to build godly character. We want to pursue
the Lord, and we want to live a life that
is pleasing to him. That's the target we aim for.
That's the target we're shooting for. And we're talking about
(13:27):
this last hour. Um, you know, we're never going to
be perfect this side of heaven. And it's, uh, it's
ridiculous to think that that could happen. However, we don't
want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We
are called very clearly in God's word to pursue holiness,
to pursue righteousness. And it's out of that love we
(13:48):
have for God. We want to live a life that's
pleasing to him, that's that's most important. But we have
to be careful that we don't fall into the oh, no,
God's mad at me. He's displeased with me because I
fell this one time. Uh, that can get us in
the weeds as well. But we need to embrace the
grace we need to pursue with effort through the power
(14:10):
of the Holy Spirit. A lot of these things we're
talking about, the battle is real against these sins. But
knowing that God is for us. So when we build
godly character, I think it's kind of implied with the
word build. It takes time, doesn't it?
S3 (14:28):
It does take time. And, uh, you know, my, my,
just to go back to my chapter, Thanksgiving, uh, that's
been actually a lifelong quest for me, because I would
say that it points in my life. I was a
very critical person and this is where things like community,
somebody reflecting back and occasionally my wonderful wife will say,
you're pretty critical today. And I'll say, uh, I hate
(14:52):
that you're right, but you're right. But also community and
means hanging around with people who are godly people and
are going to impress upon you the way of life
that pleases the Lord. And so moving towards thanksgiving is
also for me, a discipline, that is to say, when
I'm prone to complain, I'll say, let's say my wife
(15:14):
is dissatisfying. Me, or one of my friends, or my
children or grandchildren. I'll just stop and give thanks for
all their good traits, right? So what? What's what's the
cure for gluttony? The cure for gluttony is to give
thanks always, as the Lord says. I mean, this is
what God has given us. This is maybe not the
food I wanted today, but I'm not starving. This is
(15:35):
what I have. It's sufficient. Thank you, Lord, for this
gift this day. And that drives out gluttony, the desire
for everything to be perfect and to have more and more.
Give thanks for what you have. That's God's provision. So
keeping your eyes on the Lord is a part of it.
But then. But you get there through the impulse to
be closer to Christ, to desire God given, spirit driven
(15:57):
desire to be closer to the Lord on one side,
but on the other side. We're not a bunch of
individualists in our friends, and there could be a friend
we are reading as well as a friend in our
church community. Our friends are going to give us that,
that good impetus to see things better and to find
a better way of living because we do struggle.
S2 (16:20):
Thanks for listening to Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. Please
take a minute to follow, subscribe and review us. And
no matter where in the world you are, you can
listen to us live from 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays
on the Moody Radio app.
Kurt and Kate mornings. Not just on the radio.
S2 (00:03):
It's a podcast too.
S1 (00:06):
The seven deadly sins are pride, greed, anger, envy, sloth, gluttony,
and lust. These sins have endured since the fall of
man in the garden. But here's the deal they don't
(00:28):
need to endure in a believer's life, right?
S2 (00:32):
And you know what they can mean more than you
think they mean. So even if you think you have
one of them or all of them under control, there
may be aspects of the virtues that, uh, that are
hurting you.
S1 (00:46):
We were, uh, I don't know. How do I describe
this conversation with pastor, uh, Professor Dan Doriani? Uh, we
were refreshed with, uh, he had a very refreshing way
to look at battling these these deadly sins. Various camera
angles causing us to view things in a way that
is not commonplace. And I think it was really helpful.
(01:10):
We hope you agree. Stick around for a few minutes
and take a listen. There's always a story behind the story.
The story behind the book. Why did you decide to
tackle the seven deadly sins?
S3 (01:23):
Well, there's two answers to it. Number one is I
was at a colloquy, which means a bunch of theologians.
And somebody said, And Dan's going to give a talk
in 20 minutes after our hour break. And I said,
excuse me. What? Nobody, nobody told me I was giving
a talk today.
S1 (01:39):
I thought I was oh, it's kind of like being
on this show, actually.
S3 (01:43):
Well, actually, I had some warning for the show, but
I thought, okay, I've got to give a talk. And
so I said, it's the easiest thing for me to
do is give my summary of the entire Christian life
the way I teach it, and an ethics class, biblical
ethics class at Covenant Seminary. And the essence of it
is Christ likeness, plus the spiritual disciplines driven by faith,
(02:06):
fueled by union with Christ also. We could call that
also the presence of the Holy Spirit, because they're they're
basically the same thing. To be united with Christ is
to be united with the Spirit of Christ. Right. So, um,
that that's what I spoke on for 20 minutes and
or 30 minutes, 20 minutes later and a bunch of
people said, where's that written down? And I said, it's not.
(02:27):
And and one thing led to another. And I decided
to write a book that starts with union with Christ,
because all virtue and all good behavior starts with knowing
Christ and having the power through union with him and
the Holy Spirit and Christian community to actually make progress.
(02:48):
Not by gritting your teeth or saying, oh, I got
to list all the laws and follow the laws. I'm
I'm a new creature, and it is actually possible for
me to live a new way.
S1 (02:57):
Yeah, we have to see it as being possible in Jesus.
That's that's the bottom line in Jesus through the power
of the Holy Spirit. Virtue. That's some people might think
that's an old fashioned word. I think that's a word
that we should be putting into the spotlight. It's important.
What do you think?
S3 (03:16):
Well, it is an old fashioned word. It's been around
for thousands of years, I think, you know, even even
before Christian theology existed, the Greeks were talking about the
great virtues of life. But it's a biblical concept, although
not every translation has it. The word is arete. And, uh,
passages like Second Peter chapter one, uh, says that God
(03:39):
has given us great promises, so that through them you
might become partakers of the divine nature. Now, if that's
not virtue, I don't know what is to participate in
God's love and kindness and grace and patience, and of course,
us Self-control. I don't like the word self-control because it
implies you are controlling yourself and your battle with yourself.
(04:01):
But maybe restraint is a good word because God does
restrain our worst impulses, and we also work to restrain
them as well. And then second, Peter goes on to say,
for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your
faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control, steadfastness, godliness,
(04:21):
brotherly affection, and love. So it is a biblical concept.
It is an old fashioned word, and not everybody likes
it because it sounds like an improvement program for the soul.
Kind of like you go to the gym to get
your body strong. We're going to do a few things
to make our ethical system strong, very self oriented. That's
(04:42):
the problem with it. Um, but we want to say
the essence of virtue is to be more and more
like God. And there's it's hard to object to that.
S1 (04:50):
Yeah, I totally agree. And morality never saved anyone. Virtue
getting it all right. Your behavior never saved anyone. What
saves us is the blood of the Lord Jesus. And
out of that, when you receive him as your Lord
and Savior by faith, out of that comes virtue. Everything
(05:15):
emanates from your relationship with Jesus.
S4 (05:19):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to this
episode of the Kurt and Kate Mornings podcast. We always
welcome a review with your thoughts and comments, and please
feel free to subscribe and follow us as well.
S1 (05:31):
How do you decide? Well, we're going to get a
bunch of these guys to actually write on one aspect
of the Seven Deadly Sins. How'd you come up with
the contributors?
S3 (05:42):
Well, there's two reasons. First of all, I want to
get younger writers writing, and several of the people here
are younger. That was part of it. Who never published
before or hardly published. But the truth is, I looked
at maybe I read power, read about ten books on
virtue and vice, and they all had a sameness of tone.
(06:02):
And I thought, I want different approaches. And so I
asked seven people. So I wrote three chapters, and there
are actually eight other chapters written by friends of mine
or people I know, maybe not close friends, but people
I knew would do well. And I wanted a variety
of perspectives. So I wrote on gluttony, but other people
wrote on sloth and lust and anger and greed. And
(06:25):
I have to say, one of them, Chris Gordon Christine,
is her proper name. But Chris Gordon said, I want
to write about lust. Lust seems to be a male problem.
We think lust is only for men, but women can
lust too, which is not just for her sexual lust,
but also lust for control and for prosperity and a
new house and that sort of thing. So I never
(06:46):
would have thought of it that way. Right. So Chris
gave me a fresh perspective on it. And a man
from your neck of the woods. Actually, Trent Castillo, who
lives in southwest Florida. A pastor there. What a terrific
chapter on sloth as essentially indifference to love of God
and neighbor that cripples you and makes you hopeless and
(07:09):
despairing and inert. And so you don't love people. So
I just I love the chapters because they came up
with so many things that I wouldn't have thought of.
I would have fallen into the sameness trap.
S1 (07:22):
I think that's a great point. That's wonderful. So from
Lust to Love, uh, Christine Gordon, let's go back to
that one. I am going to get to gluttony. Okay.
Just so you know. Yeah, sure. I'm putting you on notice. Uh,
but you kind of outline some of that. Yeah. We
don't really think about lust as being a problem for women.
You know what, though? This is on the increase when
(07:43):
it comes to when we see the studies pornography use
among women, even those who are believers. You know, Christian
women are struggling with this. This is just the unfortunately,
the nature of the beast in our culture. It's it's
very sad.
S3 (07:58):
Right? You're absolutely right. And one of the reasons why
she wanted to address it and said, hey, I'll take
that one, is because, as we all know, if you
say lust is a sexual lust. I mean, now is
a problem for men, and women are struggling with sexual lust.
They feel abnormal. I'm not allowed to talk about it.
Men are allowed to talk about struggling with lust. But
(08:19):
a woman saying, listen, women have this problem too. Let's
talk about it. Let's bring it into our open discourse.
We can we can discuss it with the friends, Christian
friends who shape us and give us hope in community.
And that was one of the reasons why she wanted
to write that chapter. But it's also true that she said,
(08:40):
lust for things and and lust for control are other
forms of lust. Yeah. So she's a serious writer. She
makes her case. Well.
S1 (08:47):
Yeah. All right, so let's talk about gluttony. And from
gluttony to Thanksgiving. How long has it been everybody? Let's
see a show of hands here among those who are
joining us this morning. Like, I can really see you.
I know we're radio, but it's just for the sake
of the conversation. How long has it been since you
(09:09):
have heard a sermon? Uh, heard a message at your
church on the sin of gluttony. When was the last time?
Is it something that has happened within the past week, year? Month? Years?
I would venture to say if we were to take
(09:29):
a highly unscientific poll here this morning.
S2 (09:32):
The only time we take.
S1 (09:33):
The only time we do take. Of course, we're on
a budget. What can I say? Uh, is the fact
that most of us would say, well, I can't remember
the last sermon I heard about gluttony. In fact, I
don't think I've ever heard one. There would be a
lot of people who would say that. Why do you
think this is?
S3 (09:50):
Well great question. And I think part of it is
because it's considered one of the acceptable sins. So, you know,
greed is quasi acceptable. There's somebody wrote a book on
acceptable sins a while ago. Good book. So.
S1 (10:05):
Oh, yeah. That was Jerry bridges who wrote that book. Right?
S3 (10:08):
He sure did. Yeah.
S1 (10:09):
Yeah.
S3 (10:10):
Yeah. So gluttony being, um, you know, an eater and
a drinker, of course, we don't indulge people who are
alcoholics and show up drunk at events in the church, but, uh,
we do not, um, we don't pay equal attention to
all the sins that exist. The other thing I think is,
you know, you don't want to make people feel bad.
(10:30):
I've been a pastor, I'm a professor, but I've been
a pastor for about half of my career. You don't
want to make people overweight feel bad. And and for
that reason, we avoid it. But the thing is. So I'm.
I've weighed the same amount for 50 years. I'm six
feet 180, and I am guilty of three of the
five marks of of gluttony, according to my own book,
(10:52):
my own research, which includes things like wanting it to
taste really good and complaining if it isn't, and wanting
to eat now and not wanting to wait for other
people and just not exercising that little bit of restraint
to wait 5 minutes or 7 minutes for somebody else.
S1 (11:10):
By the way, producer Mark, I just have to call
you out on that right now.
S4 (11:14):
Yeah. My eyes widened.
S1 (11:15):
A little bit. Yeah, yeah. He's okay. Okay, Dan. Continue on. Yes.
S3 (11:20):
Well, so I mean, the idea is we don't want
to make people feel bad, but the truth is, there
are different forms of of gluttony. And a person can
be very slender and according to the standards of the day,
be gluttonous. Let me put it a different way. We
would all say that Esau and the sons of Eli
are good examples of gluttony in the Bible. So Esau
sold his birthright for some food. Now we don't know
(11:43):
if he was thin or thick, but he wanted his
food and he wanted it now. And he despised everything
else because he wanted food and he wanted it now.
So the essence of gluttony is a desire to be
satisfied exactly the way I want to be satisfied. And
I want it now, and I want it to be perfect.
(12:03):
And that can lead to obesity. And obesity is a
real problem. But it's not just obesity. I think a
lot of pastors don't want to make people squirm in
their seats if they have a few extra pounds, or
maybe even a lot of extra pounds. Um, it is,
of course, an act of love to point out any sin.
I mean, that's that's what the Bible says, that, um,
(12:25):
we rebuke those whom we love. Now, we do it
in a kind way, but we do have to address
things like gluttony, because there are a form of self-indulgence.
And the whole idea of the deadly sins is they're
they're often gateways to others. And so for centuries and centuries,
pastors have said that if you eat too much, it
can lead to drinking too much, and it can lead
(12:47):
to not quenching your sexual appetites and other appetites, like
maybe the appetite for power or glory. So in general,
self-control or restraint in one area, it's kind of like
a muscle. You learn to restrain yourself in other areas.
S1 (13:04):
Wow, that's really insightful. I think that's if you connect
the dots on this. And at the end of the day,
we want to build godly character. We want to pursue
the Lord, and we want to live a life that
is pleasing to him. That's the target we aim for.
That's the target we're shooting for. And we're talking about
(13:27):
this last hour. Um, you know, we're never going to
be perfect this side of heaven. And it's, uh, it's
ridiculous to think that that could happen. However, we don't
want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We
are called very clearly in God's word to pursue holiness,
to pursue righteousness. And it's out of that love we
(13:48):
have for God. We want to live a life that's
pleasing to him, that's that's most important. But we have
to be careful that we don't fall into the oh, no,
God's mad at me. He's displeased with me because I
fell this one time. Uh, that can get us in
the weeds as well. But we need to embrace the
grace we need to pursue with effort through the power
(14:10):
of the Holy Spirit. A lot of these things we're
talking about, the battle is real against these sins. But
knowing that God is for us. So when we build
godly character, I think it's kind of implied with the
word build. It takes time, doesn't it?
S3 (14:28):
It does take time. And, uh, you know, my, my,
just to go back to my chapter, Thanksgiving, uh, that's
been actually a lifelong quest for me, because I would
say that it points in my life. I was a
very critical person and this is where things like community,
somebody reflecting back and occasionally my wonderful wife will say,
you're pretty critical today. And I'll say, uh, I hate
(14:52):
that you're right, but you're right. But also community and
means hanging around with people who are godly people and
are going to impress upon you the way of life
that pleases the Lord. And so moving towards thanksgiving is
also for me, a discipline, that is to say, when
I'm prone to complain, I'll say, let's say my wife
(15:14):
is dissatisfying. Me, or one of my friends, or my
children or grandchildren. I'll just stop and give thanks for
all their good traits, right? So what? What's what's the
cure for gluttony? The cure for gluttony is to give
thanks always, as the Lord says. I mean, this is
what God has given us. This is maybe not the
food I wanted today, but I'm not starving. This is
(15:35):
what I have. It's sufficient. Thank you, Lord, for this
gift this day. And that drives out gluttony, the desire
for everything to be perfect and to have more and more.
Give thanks for what you have. That's God's provision. So
keeping your eyes on the Lord is a part of it.
But then. But you get there through the impulse to
be closer to Christ, to desire God given, spirit driven
(15:57):
desire to be closer to the Lord on one side,
but on the other side. We're not a bunch of
individualists in our friends, and there could be a friend
we are reading as well as a friend in our
church community. Our friends are going to give us that,
that good impetus to see things better and to find
a better way of living because we do struggle.
S2 (16:20):
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