If I were Satan and my ultimate goal was to thwart God's kingdom and purposes, one of my main strategies would be to get churchgoers to ignore the Holy Spirit.

How true it is that without the guidance of the Holy Spirit intellect not only is undependable but also extremely dangerous, because it often confuses the issue of right and wrong.

Know that once we have received Jesus, we can't continue to live our old sinful lifestyle. Now that we have His Holy Spirit living in us, guiding us, and transforming us, we have no excuse.

Anything we accomplish of eternal value is brought about by the ability and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.

Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down.

The desire is overwhelming. Why? Because there is availability without accountability.

When you look at it closely, drunkenness is a lordship problem. Who is your master, God or your desires? Do you desire God above all else, or do you desire something in creation more than you desire the Creator? At root, drunkards are worshipping another god—alcohol. Drunkenness violates the command "You shall have no other gods before me".

When addicts turn away from the Lord and gaze at the object of their desire, God becomes a distant memory. Since one common belief is that God is going to keep us from something good, we try to distract ourselves from remembering him.

Sin is not rational. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't look into the future. It doesn't consider consequences, especially if they are not immediate. All it knows is "I WANT—I WANT MORE.

Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.

When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.