Everyone has their own temptations, but what happens when your temptation becomes your guilty pleasure? In this five-week series, we’ll dive into familiar (yet often taboo) topics like pride, greed, sloth, lust, and anger, and how these age-old vices affect your modern life, and the transformative power God can bring through their opposing virtues.
Helpful Resources
1 | All Kinds of Greed| The Gospel Coalition| Blog Post
Jesus said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life doesn’t consist in an abundance of possessions.” Luke 12:15
2 | Respectable Sins | Jerry Bridges | Book
Have we become so focused on “major” sins that we’ve grown apathetic about our subtle sins?
Renowned author Jerry Bridges takes you into a deep look at the corrosive patterns of behavior that we often accept as normal, in this established and impactful book.
3 | Dangerous Virtures | How to Follow Jesus When Evil Masquerades as Good | John Koesler | Book
When sin is disguised as virtue, the path to cultivating righteousness becomes impossible. Such is the challenge Christians face in the modern age. Not long ago, most people would agree that the seven deadly sins are in fact deadly. But ask them today, and you’ll hear a different answer. Today, “anger” is often considered an admirable emotion, “lust” the only expression of love, and “greed” the unassailable right to “get what’s yours.” The world can rebrand sin all it wants and declare the death of truth, but it has no power against the truth of the Scripture. What God calls sin is sin—no matter what the world says. And sin always has the same destination—death and destruction.
4 | Hope and Help for Handling Anger | Daily Grace Co. | Podcast
Anger is something we don’t often want to talk about. We can minimize our own struggles with anger, or we can neglect to see anger in our own hearts. However, we believe it is extremely important to discuss how anger impacts our personal relationships and our relationship with the Lord.
5 | How to Stop Looking at Porn | Betterman | Article
We know lust and pornography deeply impact us. Porn rewires our brains: porn creates grey matter, which stunts our thinking, memory, and jacks up our neural pathways. Porn prevents us from really using our minds.
97% of men in the church have watched pornography, female porn viewership is growing at a faster rate than male viewership, and a frightful amount of people admit to watching porn regularly while in marriage.
6 | The Anger Theif | Authentic Manhood | Blog Post
We say stuff when we’re mad that we don’t necessarily mean but can never take back.
We aim to wound, but that wound can’t be undone. It’s irreversible.
We see this profoundly in Scripture through the story of Samson. In Judges 14, he became incredibly angry with his wife and finally, when his anger subsided, he decided to go visit his wife to patch things up. But Judges 15 tells us that her father didn’t let him see her. He thought Samson hated her, so he had given her to Samson’s best man.
7 | The Case for Christ| Lee Strobel | Book
Is there credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God? Former atheist and Chicago Tribune journalist Lee Strobel takes an investigative look at the evidence from the fields of science, philosophy, and history.
In this revised and updated bestseller, The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools such as Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis, asking hard-hitting questions–and building a captivating case for Christ’s divinity.
