Yesterday I mentioned the seven deadly sins: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth or acedia. . How many of these have you had problems with? If you are anything like me you have probably struggled with all seven. have you ever noticed that when they are listed pride is always at the top? There is a reason for this, pride leads to all the others. Okay, I don’t really know if that is true or not, but I will do to get to five hundred words.

When you are vain or prideful, you usually suffer from envy, after all you want to be better than the next guy. You always need to be one step above everybody else. Of course the problem is the next guy want to always be one step ahead of you. Envy eventually leads you to lust after what someone else has. It could be his wife, it could be his life, you feel you need this in order to feed your pride. This will sooner or later lead you to gluttony. Next you will suffer from the sin of avarice or greed. You will have so much, yet still want more and soon you have too much. This then turns to wrath when you get angry because you can’t have every thing you want. Soon you become slothful or lazy because you either have so much you don’t care to get any more or you realize you can’t reach your goals, you can’t get ahead of the next guy and you give up.

Have you been down that road? I have. And going back to something I said yesterday, when you are surrounded by noise, by people telling you how you need this and that, how you need more than the next guy, and on and on. No wonder we fall into these seven sins. And this is exactly what Satan wants. He wants this noise. He wants us to not be able to hear God speaking to us. Satan doesn’t want us to take the time to listen to God, he doesn’t want us to look around at the beauty that God has made, instead he wants us to always be busy and out of control. He wants us angry and bitter and scared. When he does this then he knows we won’t have time to listen or even talk to God.

This is what I learned after falling off that truck. Getting knocked in the head is what finally caused me to listen. And when you listen and read and learn you realize that this is Satan’s plan and that you can beat him. How? By cutting out the noise and listening to God. As I said, when you put your trust in God, you won’t need to worry about what Satan is going to do, you can and will beat him.

When you cut out the noise and listen you will also learn how to tackle those seven sins, one at a time.

The good news is that God will forgive our sins and all we have to do is confess them. With a lot of patience and faith you will be able to beat each one, one at a time. I know, I’ve mostly done it. Yes I still sin but certainly not like I used to. You can live with out sinning, you can beat temptation, you can beat Satan and still enjoy life. In fact I love life more now than I ever did when I was drinking and whoring around.