Confronting Their Lord

This is a terribly insightful chapter from Augustine's Confessions. I'm constantly amazed at how insightful he on his own soul, and how eloquent he is. I understand how this is considered a classic of Western literature, let alone Christian literature. I reprint the chapter in its entirety here for your benefit. He said...

"Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied. My mistress was torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, and my heart which clung to her was torn and wounded till it bled. And she went back to Africa, vowing to You never to know any other man and leaving with me my natural son by her. But I, unhappy as I was, and weaker than a woman, could not bear the delay of the two years that should elapse before I could obtain the bride I sought. And so, since I was not a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, I procured another mistress—not a wife, of course. Thus in bondage to a lasting habit, the disease of my soul might be nursed up and kept in its vigor or even increased until it reached the realm of matrimony. Nor indeed was the wound healed that had been caused by cutting away my former mistress; only it ceased to burn and throb, and began to fester, and was more dangerous because it was less painful" (VI.15).

This is a man in bondage. He had his mistress, if I remember correctly, for over a decade, but his mother arranged a marriage for him to a very young girl--he says, two years too young.

This was not easy as it tore his heart to bleeding to leave his mistress.

He particularly focuses on her vow not to know another man. He is caught by these words because he couldn't make that kind of commitment. He was trapped by his sin, "a slave of lust." So he got another mistress whose company relieved the burning and throbbing of loosing the first.

As he looks back, he understands that a binding sin in a person's life is a disease of the soul that people "nurse" and "keep in vigor" and even "increase."

It is here that our evangelism must confront a person, as we'll see with Augustine. What is lord? What's going to control / rule their heart? This may take awhile, but we must keep this in mind whenever giving the gospel to a person.