Being Ruled by some Wicked Thing

"So it is in all things, in every phase of life. 

Instead of ruling themselves they allow themselves to be ruled by some wicked, 

sinful thing. 

One is controlled by strong drink, another is controlled by impure

thoughts and lustful desires, another by a gluttonous appetite, and so on through the long list of human frailties. 

 

All are intemperate. Each one lacks something of that self-control which he owes himself, in filling the place of a real manly man, or womanly woman, in the world. 

No one of us has much in which he can boast himself over his fellow-mortals. "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth," saith the Lord. Rom. 14:22.

 

---It is perfectly allowable to eat and to drink. How could any live without it? But the human race from the first pair onward through the
world's history has condemned itself in that thing which in itself is one of God's good gifts to men. God created men and women in the world together. He himself established the marriage relation and surrounded it with his own holy sanctions. He created men and women with social qualities, capable of enjoying and mutually profiting by the social relation with the sanctions which he established. But for men and women to condemn themselves in these relations, which in themselves are perfectly allowable, has been not the least of the banes of human existence.

---The Lord directs that men shall be diligent in business, and prosperity is the inevitable result of such a course. But instead of holding the course with an even hand under God, men allow prosperity to lead them into the love of it for its own sake, and so condemn themselves in the thing which in itself is not only
strictly allowable, but highly commendable." A.T. Jones