He who looks sinward has his back to God-he who looks Godward has his back to sin.
Interpretation
Focusing on God leads one away from sin, while focusing on sin leads one away from God.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon emphasizes the idea that one's focus determines their moral direction. By looking toward the divine and nurturing a relationship with God, a person can distance themselves from sinful temptations. Conversely, if one fixates on sin and temptations, they turn away from the guidance and support of God, illustrating the conflict between spiritual devotion and moral failure.
In practice
In a sermon, one might use this quote to encourage the congregation to strengthen their spiritual commitment.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence.
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.
The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.
But time is yet another of God's creations, and as such, it has a life of its own.
Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.
And so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: ‘A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.’ Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.
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