Mean business with God. If your sin is an outward act, such as profanity, or smoking (which destroys the temple of the Holy Spirit), or fornication, repent with all your strength. Confess your sin to the elders if need be. Fast. Pray without ceasing.

Do not waste your time in an endless struggle leading nowhere. Call on God for deliverance through the Holy Spirit. Have the elders of the church lay hands on you and pray over you.

Make certain that you, Satan, and God are convinced that you regard your particular sin as a filthy, abominable practice that belongs in the Lake of Fire. Condemn it! Denounce it! Cease practicing it!

When we confess a specific sin and determine in our heart that by the Lord's help we never will practice it again, God is faithful and righteous to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9).

As far as an outward sin is concerned, it never is God's will we continue practicing it. Do whatever is necessary but stop the practice of it. If you are so bound by Satan you cannot stop fornicating, or lying, or swearing, or stealing, go to your church and ask the elders to bind Satan and cast him from you.

In the case of more subtle sins of imagination, denounce them before the Lord. Ask Him to remove them.

Some of your personality traits, such as pride, may not yield immediately to your confession and repentance. In that case, submit yourself to God. Pray without ceasing. Praise the Lord. Obey Him. Continually render thanks to Him.

Do all you can to stop sinning. Learn the difference between condemnation and conviction. If you are serving the Lord to the best of your ability there is no condemnation resting on you. However, the Lord may convict you of a sin. Ask the Lord to deliver you from that sin. Anxious struggling or frantic behavior will not deliver you. God will hear your cry and judge you worthy of deliverance. Then He will deliver you.

Some deliverances require years of patient waiting on God for the answer.

That through them [through those bondages that do not yield immediately] I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD to walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not. Therefore the LORD left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither delivered he them into the hand of Joshua. (Judges 2:22,23)

Faithless Israel was slow to respond to God. On many occasions the Israelites refused to drive out the enemy but compromised with the Philistines and used them as slaves to cut wood and draw water. God did not command them to make slaves of the Canaanites. God commanded the Jews to destroy every Canaanite that breathed. But Israel was unwilling to do this.

In our day God is commanding us to destroy every spirit, great and small, that is not of the Kingdom of God. All the sins we are practicing, from the gross, overt acts to the finest, most subtle points of pride, romance, hatred, occult practices, and covetousness, are to be denounced and put to death through the Holy Spirit.

To be continued.