Hi guys, I wrote what follows here in a thread here about pornography. I suddenly realized that what I had said is actually very valuable information with universal importance, so I've decided to put it in this thread with some alterations. Hopefully you'll like it, and find it inspired:
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Above all you must learn always to have gratitude. Ingratitude, pride and feelings of incompetence feed off one another. It may seem that these are very different things, but feeling incompetent will make you think and believe that God made you to suffer. Once you accept this, a certain amount of anger towards God is easy to conceive, this is ingratitude. Ingratitude is tantamount to pride however when you decide that you can meet your objectives by "going it alone." This is very bad news; you're better off as a terrible sinner that wants to love God and yet thinks he cannot do so properly, than a secular person seeking not to sin for your own self-esteem. The devil would love it if you would turn away from God and master your bodily urges with wrath in the name of pride.
Above all you must want to end your attachment to vice for God, not for yourself. The results will be slower though, because God's way will have you learn about yourself along the way, the devil's way by contrast will keep you ignorant of yourself. Therefore you have to keep very clear in your mind that this isn't about "self-improvement," this is about what God wants, and God doesn't reward earthly notions of morals or improvement, He rewards obedience, even as Abraham was obedient.
Above all therefore, be thankful to the Lord each day, because He has granted you to live. The Lord still considers that you are righteous enough to live. You have not been rooted out of the land, you have not been uprooted and set fire to by the devouring angels. Even assuming that you have been an unfruitful tree thus far, God says that you may continue to encumber the ground (Luke 13:7-9), therefore He sees something within you that you do not. You are blessed more than you think.