How to do it...
The Basics
Some people are weak willed, others are strong willed, but God gives everyone enough strength of will to choose to believe Him. So because that power to choose comes from God, everyone has enough strength of will to make the choice. Thus whether you are weak willed or strong willed, as a Christian, God has given you His power to overcome sin. He just has to train us to use that power.
Remember, to believe God does not just mean to believe He exists. It means to believe all that He says in the Bible. If we choose to believe that something He says or does is not true or the correct thing to do, then we are choosing to no longer believe He is perfect, and therefore He is not God!
Overcoming sin (to stop doing what is wrong) is not an option. God commands us to "not sin". If we tolerate sin we are not believing God. But overcoming sin is a battle. It is part of our "will work" in believing God.
God tells us how to do this "will work":
First we "know" from the Bible that as Christian's we are now two "creatures" in one body. One creature is the old man of flesh that was a slave to sin. Before we became a Christian, we consisted of only that creature of flesh. When we became a Christian, Christ separated us from that old creature and recreated us as a new creature occupied by the Holy Spirit. The power of Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection gave us His power to overcome our old sinful creature of flesh, but we still live in that flesh.
Second God tells us to consider the old creature dead and buried with Christ's death. He tells us to now live as the new creature, having been resurrected with Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit. The old creature will sin, the new one won't, so because we believe and love God and don't want to sin we want to do the work of exercising our will to choose to act according to what God says instead of what our sinful body or Satan and his followers say.
Here is one of God's instructions on how to do this : "2 Corinthians 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Ok in order to win against what is against the knowledge of God, we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. So first, when you remember to do so, work with God's help to stop automatically believing what you are thinking and feeling. Don't just continue to automatically give your thoughts and feelings credence, ask God to help you, and then continue to work at trying to stop automatically believing what you happen to be thinking or feeling. God lives in you now and will help you. Remember, you are now two beings in one. This means that you have feelings, thoughts, convictions, and concepts that are what the old self thought, felt, and believed. And you have new feelings, thoughts, convictions, and concepts that came with your new self from God- and the new ones will continue to increase as God continues to mature you as a Christian. Then second, now that you are not automatically just believing what you are thinking and feeling, with God's help examine what you are thinking and feeling without yet giving the thoughts or feelings credence. God knows and loves you completely and will help you to know what is going on inside you. Then third, with God's help compare what those thoughts and feelings are saying to what God says is the truth. This works because God reminds you to examine your thoughts and feelings. And since He is reminding you to do it, then He already wants to show you that what you are thinking or feeling is either in agreement, or not in agreement, with what you know He says, and He will remind you of what He says or lead you to where He says it, so ask Him to lead you to it if you have to. Asking Him to lead you to it when you have to is part of doing another instruction He gives us in the Bible "Mathew 7:7 Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.". And then fourth If the thought or feeling is not saying what God says in His Word the Bible, then change that thought to what God says in the Bible to make it obedient to Christ. Then of course give that obedient thought credence. Believe it, act on it, it is the truth from God!
So with God's help choose to continue to give no credence to the thoughts and feelings that don't agree with God, and stop paying attention to them. Those thoughts and feelings come from your old self, or the world, or Satan. If not right away, those thoughts and feelings will eventually weaken in their power to tempt you as you pay them no attention.
Then, with God's help choose to believe the thoughts and feelings that you changed so that they agree with God. Those thoughts and feelings come from your new self. They are from God's Holy Spirit living within you - NOTE: You notice I keep including feelings in these instructions instead of just thoughts; that is because feelings come from thoughts even if we are not aware of the thoughts; often if you are feeling something but don't know why, you can ask God to help you see what thoughts are producing the feelings, and also the feelings themselves can cause you to think something and you can capture those thoughts, check them and conform them to what the Bible says, and then the feelings can change to agree with the Bible. If I can't confirm that what I am feeling is from God, I ignore those feelings because if they were from God He would make it clear to me, so I know those feelings can't be trusted .
Doing these steps will result in you doing what God wants you to do, because as you believe the thoughts and feelings that are from God you will act accordingly. This behavior is called "walking in the Light", which God commands us to do in "1 john 1:5-7 And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you: God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin."
Can it be this simple in concept? It can and it is! God purposely made it this simple in concept so that anyone can understand it. And receiving God's love, and His provision for all of your needs, and His forgiveness, and a place in Heaven after you die is NOT dependent on how well you do these things. God is already giving you His love, provision, forgiveness, and a place in Heaven as gifts simply because you are a Christian! The "work" you do to "walk in the Light", and the resulting improvement in your character, and the resulting good influence you have on those around you, is the "fruit" of the Holy Spirit. It is produced in you by God because of your faith in Him. You are not saved by these "works". It is your faith that saves you. But the fruit, that is these works, is what shows that your faith is real. At first you may only see a little fruit. It may be no more than that you are willing to admit you are a Christian. You may not know anything other than that. You may not have any other knowledge concerning what is right and what is wrong. Rejoice! Even if this is all the "fruit" you have as evidence that you really believe, it is enough to prove that your faith in God is real! The "fruit" of obedience will grow as God increases your knowledge. As He convinces us of what is right and what is wrong, and we continue to believe Him, we will stop more and more from doing what is wrong, and we will instead do more and more of what is right. We will become what the Bible calls an overcomer, and will overcome more and more sin as we mature. So as long as we are making all this effort, we should not evaluate our success or condemn ourselves by our opinion, or anyone else's opinion, of how well we should be doing. And we should not be comparing ourselves to others. We each grow at our own rate and in accordance with God's plan for us. It is normal and good to want to grow more and faster and we can pray for that to happen. But we should never condemn ourselves, or God if we don't "grow" as fast as we want to because God is the expert and He won't give us more than we can handle.
So if it is so simple, why does the Bible say that choosing to be a Christian is choosing the "steep, narrow, rocky road"; while choosing not to be a Christian is the wide, easy road? The answer is that it is automatic to not believe God, since that is what we do automatically before we become a Christian. And it is automatic to do the wrong that the we do before we become a Christian because then we are automatically sinful, even when we do not know it; and a lot of unbelievers don't even know they are doing evil because they haven't let themselves hear God yet. So choosing to be a Christian is choosing to go against what we automatically do. And on top of that we are in a spiritual WAR! And if this is not enough to challenge us, our own old nature itself will try to convince us to not believe God and to do what our sinful bodies want instead. These are the reasons why choosing to be a Christian is choosing to take the narrow, rocky, steep road. But as we persevere in our choice to be a Christian by choosing to continue to "walk in the Light", God increases the strength of our faith, the amount of sin we overcome, and how powerfully He can use us to fight this battle for ourselves and others! He changes us into mightier and mightier Christian soldiers!
If you are a Christian you are already in the war. The battle has already started for you. Often when we are new Christians God will shelter us from any hard fighting because we are just babies. We may not even be aware that we are in a war. The more we learn of Him and His ways, and the more we grow in our faith, and the more capable He makes us at walking in the Light; the more the enemy will insist on battling against us. God will involve us more and more in the battle to train us, and to test us to show us if we are really serious about our commitment to Him. He, of course, already knows the answer but he needs to help us see if we need to choose to be more serious. And God uses us more and more to help others! Sometimes God places new Christians directly into the battle. If you are one of these do not panic. Just do your best to walk in the Light and to get to know God. He will get you through the battle. Just stick to it by choosing to trust and believe Him. He does not give us anything that is harder than He knows we can handle with His help. If anyone loses a battle, then just start over again. The next time you will be more able to depend on God for your strength. As long as you keep starting over you will gain more and more wisdom and faith and will learn how to receive more and more help from God to win the battle. You see we NEVER win using our own strength. Becoming a strong warrior is simply a matter of learning more and more how to receive spiritual strength from God.
Now here is an example of a battle that can start right away:
You experience thoughts and/or feelings that tell you that you are not saved (this may happen a lot).
First, with God's help choose to not automatically believe those thoughts or feelings.
"OK I'm not going to automatically believe I'm not a Christian even though I have doubts and feel like I am not one. Please help me to do this God, in Jesus name I pray."
Second, with God's help examine what those thoughts and feelings are saying.
"God please show me what these thoughts and feelings are really saying. OK I can see that the thoughts and feelings are saying that I sin and fail too much to be a Christian and so I didn't really believe."
Third, with God's help compare what the thoughts and feelings are saying with what God says.
"God please tell me what you say about this. Hmmm, God says that He does not count how many times I sin or fail. He made me a Christian when I first decided to believe in Him."
"But the thoughts and feelings are also telling me that I was not sincere when I decided to believe God."
"However God says that since I acted on my decision to believe Him, by repenting of my sin and asking Him to forgive me and be my Lord and Savior, those actions were the works produced in me by my faith. That proves that I really did believe. And since I still repent of my sins, asking Him to forgive me and be Lord and Savior, these actions are the fruit of my faith, the 'work' I do because of my faith, and that 'work' proves that my faith in God is real so I am still a Christian. "
Fourth, with God's help continue to not give credence to those thoughts and feelings that are not from God.
"Ok God, these thoughts and feelings do not line up with what you say. I am not going to pay attention to them or believe them. Help me do that, and keep doing it until they go away, in Jesus name I pray."
Fifth, with God's help choose to believe what He says and continue to do so.
"God, I believe what you have said and I am going to continue to believe you. In Jesus name I pray please help me to do so. Thankyou so much for helping me win this battle, and for all your help."
God tells us to take EVERY thought captive, and to GUARD our hearts. This means to always keep an ear toward God so He can reveal to us when we are not walking in the Light, and It means to have an attitude of, with God, watching ourselves so that we are not just automatically letting ourselves believe the thoughts and feelings that do not come from God, and therefore are acting like the old sinful creature we used to be. An "attitude" is a habitual way of thinking. Our goal is to develop the habit of, together with God, watching ourselves and listening to God to make sure we are always "walking in the Light" instead of the sinful flesh. Pray to God that He will help you develop this habit. Remember, developing this habit is part of the "fruit" of your faith. Remember it is your faith that has already made you a Christian with full access to God and all His love and provision for you. It is your faith that has allowed God to save you. Because of your faith you are already a Christian. You are not earning your salvation by developing this habit. So how well and how long it takes you and God to fully develop this habit in you is not an issue. Because of your faith God has already counted you as perfect! Developing the habit of always walking in the Light is for the purpose of helping you keep your faith and become who you and God want you to be, which is to be more and more like Jesus! God knows you completely and He knows what you need. He knows what changes He has to make in you. He knows what you have to learn. He knows what you have to experience in order to grow as a Christian. As you seek Him He will help you develop the habit of always walking in the Light. He will do it step by step at a rate that works for you. And each step will set you more free of wrong, hurtful behavior, and replace it with more rewarding, helpful behavior. And each step will make you a stronger, Christian soldier. You have nothing to lose, and so very much to gain! It is such a perfect and wonderful solution!
These are the basic instructions for being a Christian. Applying these instructions will allow God to mature us as Soldiers of Christ. There is much, much more help from God then these basic pages communicate. But if you seek with all your heart, and since knowing what God says is a necessary part of walking in the Light, part of that seeking is the reading of the Bible as much as you can as you are able, you will find all the help He offers. There are some Christians who just do not have access to a Bible. Fortunately for them God promises us that the Holy Spirit who dwells in us will lead us to all truth. They can ask God to do so and trust that He will tell them all He requires them to know, and that they can trust in His grace and understanding. Then, if and when God provides them with a Bible, they can test their understanding to make sure they have heard it from God, and perhaps learn even more. For the rest of us who have access to a Bible, God tells us that He provided the Bible to equip us. We would be making a serious and dangerous mistake to think that we do not need to learn what the Bible says.
Now I want to give you an idea of how long it took me to learn this from God. First I had to read the Bible which took awhile. No one told me any of this. Once God showed me these instructions in the Bible, I committed myself to doing them, so I went through the steps the first time and it was good. Then I immediately got sidetracked by earthly things and behaved just like I did before. God let me behave in the old way for about a month. Then He lovingly, showed me my bad behavior and showed me that I was not continuing to work at doing these steps to walk in His Light. I then repented of my sin and again committed myself to work at doing these steps to walk in the Light so I could behave the why He wants me to behave. So this went on for several months. It got to the point where I became more and more upset that I wasn't continuing to walk in the Light all the time, and kept forgetting to work to do as He instructed. When He showed I wasn't doing it, I said "I'm so sorry God. I failed again!" Then God answered "What do you mean again? Each time you repented I forgave you and counted it as if you hadn't failed. So each time I saw you fail was to me the first time." Then I better understood how wonderful it was for Jesus to once and for all take my punishment for my sin upon Himself and die for me on the Cross. Each time we sincerely repent we are starting over like we had never sinned before! This pattern went on and on but as it went on, the time between my following God's instructions to walk in His Light and my not doing them became shorter and shorter! God WAS training me, changing me! I just had to know all I had to do was keep choosing to "repent and start over", to keep choosing to believe in God. He was making it work. And in time I was walking in the Light daily and getting the benefit of winning the spiritual battles against Satan and my sinful flesh on a daily basis. Life was greatly improved, and I was able to help others. Now I am able to do the steps and walk in the Light almost minute by minute and even though the battles get tougher, I with God's help win, and can share this with you.
In God's love, onward and Upward to Heaven in our Lord Christ Jesus!