How Can I Overcome Powerful Desires?

<p>It’s obvious, isn’t it?&nbsp;Pray more, read the Bible more, share your faith more, participate in pilgrimages to holy sites, sing more (especially spiritual songs) . . . in short, treat the Faith like one of those sales meetings where they engage a specialist to whip everybody up into a frenzy of self-confidence!&nbsp;Then, surely, there will be no room for wayward desires.&nbsp;Right?&nbsp;Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.</p><p>Since you’re reading this question, I have to assume that you’ve already tried all of that and found, to your dismay, that it doesn’t work.&nbsp;Some people have this idea that religion allows them to shortcut the normal human processes of agony, desire, decay, and death.&nbsp;But that’s not how it works.&nbsp;When God makes the saint, he does not unmake the man.&nbsp;There is no way to shortcut normal human processes through some secret powers built into religion.&nbsp;Anyone suggesting that is selling something, something that will severely damage your humanity.</p>