"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37, KJV) (Deuteronomy 6)

If we're honest with ourselves, we know that it's during our times of inattention to God that we face our greatest challenges with temptation and sin.

God designed our lives to be filled with Him. If you are born again through the blood of Christ, you have a spiritual "reservoir" within you. That "reservoir" is kept constantly full through the pursuit of a love relationship with God the Father. When this reservoir becomes empty, due to lack of attention to the relationship (e.g., lack of prayer, worship, Bible reading, meditation, fasting, confession), opportunity abounds for sin to fill the void, particularly sexual sin. Samson, David and Solomon are all prime biblical examples of "good" people who stumbled when out of fellowship with God. They all broke off their fellowship with God leaving open a "void" within their spirits.

When we lose the sense that Christ is among us, that we have an individual relationship to the Lord of glory Himself, we no longer live our lives in the awareness and the excitement that we are partners with Christ in everything we do. When that begins to fade from the Christian consciousness, sin begins to crowd in, and press in upon us.

Despite the fact God forgave us our sins and restored us back into favor with Him, our sin has left a permanent area of weakness in some area of our life. Once we give way to a temptation it will always remain as weakness to which we can easily give into again.

The most effective way to conquer sin in our lives and remain pure is to pursue a love-relationship with God. It starts with genuine repentance.

In His letter to the Church in Ephesus, the Lord Jesus Christ says, " Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place--unless you repent." (Revelation 2:4, 5) The Church in Ephesus lost their love for Christ. They had fallen out of relationship or fellowship with Him. They had grown cold toward Christ. Then they are warned that if they do not repent and return to Him they would lose their light (lamp stand).

Throughout the Word of God, the lamp stand represents the presence of Light, which, in turn, is the Holy Spirit. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit, our lives would lose their impact and we easily fall back into sin.

What do we do when that happens? How do we recover from this? Jesus gives three clear, specific steps to take: Remember, repent and return! There it is. "Remember the height from which you have fallen." Look back. Remember what it was like when you first came to Jesus. Remember the joy you had in the Lord. Remember the closeness you felt to Him and Him to you. Remember the inner support you leaned upon in times of pressure and trouble. Remember the ease with which you prayed. Remember the delight you took in other Christians, in the reading of the Word and in the hearing of it. Remember how you could hardly bear to miss a service because you were learning so much of the truth about life. Remember that? Look back. Think back. Our Lord says, "Remember the height from which you have fallen."

And then, repent! Change your mind. That is what repentance means. Change your mind about what has taken the place of Jesus in your life. Renounce that ambition, that pride of position, that longing for approval that has become all-important to you and motivates your work. Give up your critical spirit, your backbiting, your complaining attitude, your reliance on knowledge or your training to make an impact in life. Put the Lord back in the center and focus of every area of your life.

Repent. Change your mind. And then, return! The Lord Jesus was real, vital and important to me. But in these last few years as I look at my life, I find I have drifted away from Him. He put an "X" on the periphery of the circle of my life, and said, "You have drifted over to this point." I'm constantly praying that God will lead me back to the center. It is vital for us to do what the Lord tells us to do: repent and return to where you were before. "Do the things you did at first," Jesus says.

What are those things? Well, you read your Bible with eager eyes. Remember the time when you could not get enough of it? You longed to find out what the Word of God said. And you prayed about everything -- even finding a parking place! You responded to the hurts and the needs around you with compassion and with love, and you did not count it an imposition. Above all, you praised God from your heart. You loved to sing praises to His name and to think about His grace to you. Now, do that again, Jesus says. Start there.

Fellowship with Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is His task to take the things of Christ and make them known unto us, to make the person of Jesus vivid and real in our daily lives. The Holy Spirit makes Christ real to your heart, enabling Him to satisfy the thirsts or voids of your soul; God, through the Holy Spirit, giving us the power, as well as the resources, to resist temptation and sin.

Now this is what we, oftentimes, lack when we are constantly giving into temptations and falling into sin.

Conquering sin in our lives today, tomorrow, next week or next year requires developing a deeper relationship with God. There is no other way. When we have God, we don't need anything more.

Copyright Ron Stephens