Placing an order in a café recently, the server said, “You don’t eat meat? That’s weird.” I responded, with a smile of course, “Yeah, it’s way less weird to catch a beautiful creature, look into its frightened eyes, cut its throat as it struggles to get free, dismember its body, slice it in pieces, fry it up in a pan and eat it with laughter around a table with your friends as you look into one another’s eyes and give no thought at all to the whole brutal affair.”

Too much said, I know, but sometimes the words just fall out of my mouth before I can stop them.

Once a man came to my house to make a repair. He commented: “It’s weird to come into a house that doesn’t have a TV on in the background that I have to talk over. It seems oddly quiet in here.” I thought to myself, “Huh. Are we at a place where it’s just ‘normal’ to live with a constant backdrop of TV murder, lust, profanity and deceit, and it’s weird …
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We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. – Romans 8:37

Whoever you are, whatever your struggles and temptations may be, sweet victory is yours for the taking.

Right now!

All you need do is appreciate, appropriate and act upon what already belongs to you in the person of Jesus Christ. You are guaranteed success in whatever battle you may be fighting, not because you are sufficient for the battle—you are not!—but because there are massively powerful provisions at your fingertips, in Christ.

Here are three simple steps that will release you from the grip of even the most besetting sin.

1. Name the Thing

Honesty is the precursor to victory.

Before God, and in your own conscience, call your sin exactly what it is. Cease all explanations and excuses. Just get on your knees and confess that this thing is absolutely opposed to God’s character, that it is hurting others and destroying you. Verbalizing the truth of the matter is vitally necessary. Doing so awakens a deeper sensitivity and places your heart in an honest position before God …
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Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. – 1 Corinthians 9:25, NIV

In their excellent book, The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz suggest that, “Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance.” We all have the same amount of time each day, but all of us do not bring the same amount and quality of energy to that time. Some people get more and better work done than others because they are alive with physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy that allows them to give focused and sustained attention to their goals, while others simply trudge through their days lacking usable energy. The goal should be to maintain habits that yield maximum energy rather than frantically trying to get as much as possible done with an eye on the clock.

There are four extremely effective habits we should form in order to maintain high energy.

1. Good Eating