When I joined a social network on the web to keep in touch with friends and family abroad, I met many Christian friends on-line and we have corresponded on a mutually beneficial level. One of these friends was a man in the colder countries of the world, who sent me inspiring messages about God and saints.  The friendship developed as we exchanged emails that were faith-focused.  One day, however, he sent me a very suggestive mail with the picture of a nude woman. I was disappointed and sad to think that he was too foolhardy and presumptuous to assume it will inspire me.   To cut the friendship, I wrote him of my reasons and why the inconsistency of his principles and faith beliefs bothered me. Most of us are like that man and we think we can combine holiness with compromise, and write about God and saints one day, then write about sex and erotica the next.    Such is the folly of man. Genuine change and shifting from misguided ideas to truth comes only with the personal encounter with God. I am not saying one must have religion.  Some have tons of it but never really experience inner change.  The hate and compromise with sin is still there which can only be removed by the sanctification work of the Holy Spirit in man.   A man who desires to commune sincerely with God must seek with all his heart to surrender and "die" to self, a crucifixion of all fleshly desires and impure thoughts. All who have encountered God have this inevitable transformation in their lives.

There is a "washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." (Titus 3:4-5).  God offers a "new life" not an improved life. There is a death of former self and not just a redirection of beliefs and motives.  As apostle Paul stressed in Galatians 2:20,  "I have been crucified with Christ,  and  I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." 

"God will incline us to repent of our sins  but He cannot do the repenting for us." (A.W. Tozer,  The Pursuit of God.

We cannot go on living like a plastic Christian and expect our lives to impact the world around us.  This is not a social club for intermingling,  it is a work of trusting and obeying the Lord and Savior.  He cannot be Savior unless He is Lord of our lives.  We want salvation but not the lordship of our lives. We need to take off our filthy grave clothes of the old self and decide to  walk out of that grave never to return.   We cannot expect the cross to impact the world if we profess Christ and yet let Him do all the dying,  and all we want to hear is another Lenten sermon of His dying.                                      
"Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us.  It can be removed only in spiritual experience,  never by  mere instruction."
                                        A.W. Tozer -The Pursuit of God