"Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God will peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." 2 Timothy 2:22-26
Let's look at this from the end back to the beginning. First of all you must believe that the devil exists and that the devil has power and that power is capable of being disguised in a way that can draw you and entice you to step away from the truth and live against the will of God. Even if it is only for a short season, the devil has power to take you captive. That being said, if you are born again, you have the power, not only to resist the devil, but to move forward with the power to overcome future temptations and to start taking back lost ground from past mistakes in judgement.
If you believe that the devil has power, then you will probably believe that you can recover from past errors. If you believe that you can recover from past errors, then you can believe that the method for recovery is repentance (turning around and heading in the opposite direction).
The Christian man or woman is to be strong in the knowledge of the Lord and not to be found arguing frivolously with those who don't know their right hand from their left. Christians arguing with non-Christians and Christians arguing with Christians about subjects that they are unsure of is not profitable, nor is it godly, nor are they doing anyone a favor by arguing about topics that they are not sure of.
Working our way to the beginning of the verse the scripture says follow after righteousness, faith, charity and peace. I have found that too many people are too concerned about too many subjects that have no real meaning, when if they had taken the same time and effort to just follow the scripture, everyone would be better off. This is a really big problem today; people making their own rules about Christianity and Christian behavior.
And then the verse begins with "Flee youthful lusts." This is good advice. I know that God is patient with us and goes the extra million miles explaining to us why we should or shouldn't do certain things, but if we were to follow the simple instruction from God, all would be well.
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