Anybody tired of serving the flesh?  Anybody tired of serving the devil?  I’m not saying that we’re completely under his lordship.  But I am saying this:  I think for every person in here, we allow the powers of darkness to manipulate our lives more than we should be being manipulated.  That’s a good one.  I heard it even without my hearing aids in.  Amen!  We allow so much of what we’ve fed into our flesh that we are under the bondage, the habitual actions of our flesh, more than we should be.  Can anybody say, “Amen,” to that one?  What we really love is what we honor, is who we commit time and energy to.  We can say it all we want, but we can’t argue with the Holy Ghost speaking through the Apostle Paul.  We become slaves to our flesh, because it’s natural and habitual for us to serve those things we lust after and love.

Now, we’re so governed by externals that we have to be careful to realize that when we’re speaking of moderation here, it’s not just in the things that are observable by others.  We’re out of control and under the bondage of our thoughts of self-love and this aspect that we’ve talked about so often:  that selfishness that’s within us, that creates outbursts of anger.  You see, we only become angry because we’re not being served the way we want to, because we’re lord and everything is to revolve around our emotions.

When I'm talking about temperance, self-control, I’m talking about our thought life.  I’m talking about worry, fear, the anxieties; amen?  We don’t always hear a lot of talk about that; it’s usually lustful looks and alcohol.  Temperance.  That was called the Temperance Movement back in those days, here in America, when they were fighting against alcohol and trying to do away with it.  Temperance has to do more with the thought life than anything else, because “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).  In other words, you think it first, and then you act it, right?  “Every man sins when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed” (James 1:14).  Those are things that are going on in the mind, in the soul, before we act upon them.

One of the things we need to do is make sure that we begin to get in the habit of pulling these things down early.  Amen?  You can’t stop the fiery darts.  They’re going to come.  The devil is going to make all kinds of suggestions.  Satan is going to make sure—if you’re a person who has trouble with lust, for instance, and the lust of the eye and these different things—and it can be for women; it can be for inanimate objects:  Lamborghinis, Ferraris, architecture, the homes, whatever it might be.  Isn’t it amazing how those things just happen to show up in your life?  Isn’t that amazing?

If we could actually look into the lives of each other, there would be people that we know that don’t have nearly as many occasions as those that are lusting after those things.  Now, they’re lusting somewhere else; amen?  Let me inject right here:  let’s be very careful that we live in an attitude of love; amen?  “I just don’t understand why they can’t just stop doing that.”  Why don’t you stop doing the thing that’s got you in bondage?  "Well, because it’s not nearly as ugly as what they’re doing."  Amen?  “Mine’s just inner thoughts.  I’m just hurting me.”  You’re not your own.  You’re hurting Jesus.  Your mind isn’t your own.  Your body is not your own.