Deeper Roots

A RESPONSE TO “LIVING PURELY IN AN IMPURE WORLD” BY JIM BINNEY

Binney starts off the book talking about the basics of sin in our lives.  He says almost right away that there are only three causes for problems in the human experience: sin, sickness, and Satan, or a combination of these (p. 10).  This caught me off guard.  Right away I noticed that something was left out.  What about the problems that happen in our life apart from those three things?  What happens if something inconvenient and unexpected happens in our life and its cause cannot be relegated to either sickness or sin?  Do we automatically assume that Satan is the instigator of our problems?  I think we should reconsider this. Scripture seems to point to the fact that often our “problems” are direct results of God’s intervention in our life to test us and to draw us closer to Himself.  Maybe God is actually causing these problems in our life to change us into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.  These are all things that make me think that the cause for our problems might be broader than we think.  We just need to be careful when making generalizations about our problems.  We just may miss God doing a work in our heart and trying to change us.

He discusses the extent of temptation in chapter 2.  He says that God knows what we can withstand and will never take us beyond that point (p. 27).  This gives great hope.  “Just at the time when you think it’s too much, He is there with His omnipotent power to control the winds lest they overcome you.”  God is so faithful that no matter how strong the temptation seems, and no matter how much you want to give in, He always provides a way of escape.  This truth has given me hope on many occasions.  God will always keep His promises, and He promises to give us a way out of temptation.  He is a loving God who wants us to be free from sin and to be like His Son.  This truth can be life-changing.

In chapter 6, Binney talks about how our actions are motivated by our beliefs (p. 65).  He says that we all recognize when a notoriously sinful group is sinning that their actions are motivated by their beliefs.  What we do not recognize is when that same thing happens in our own life.  We fall into sin, and we cannot figure out what led us there.  Too often, there is something that we believe about God that is not true, and that belief is leading us to choose sin rather than a loving Savior.  We need to regularly examine our beliefs to make sure that what we believe is in line with what God’s Word says.  Binney also says that if you want to know what a man believes, just look at his actions.  Our actions betray our beliefs.

Chapter 9 deals directly with the methods of the Devil.  This hit home with me because I have keenly seen Satan’s working even in my own family.  Satan is a liar and the father of lies.  His tactics are always the same.  They have been the same since the Garden of Eden.  He either flat out lies to us to get us to believe him instead of God, or he twists something God has said and gives us a half-truth making us question what God really said.  He lies to us to get us to fall.  His fiery arrows are lies that we believe easily.  Satan builds strongholds where he can get us to believe a lie (p. 115).  The more lies we believe that Satan is feeding us, the more entrapped in his snare we will become.  This is his method.  Binney has clearly identified this enemy.

His next chapter deals with our response to Satan.  How do we fight him?  Binney points out that God tells us often to resist the devil.  This seems like a difficult task.  How are we supposed to resist an unseen force that knows more about us than we know about ourselves?  He has been studying the human race for thousands of years.  He knows what we easily give into.  I agree with Binney when he says that our first response should be to submit to God.  When we are submitting to God, we are resisting the devil.  When this happens, he will flee from us.  God has promised that Satan will flee from us when we resist him.  We must then submit to God.  This promise gives us hope when we realize that many of the sins that we commit are because we have believed the lie of Satan.  If we simply submit to God, the devil will be far from us.  This will free us from many of the temptations that we would not otherwise face.

Binney’s book gives hope to many people who are looking for the source of sin in their life.  God has told us in His Word where our temptations come from.  When we know where the battle will be, we can be better prepared to fight.

Tags: addictions, Biblical Counseling, Growth, pornography, Sin

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Book Review, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.