On this opening episode of a brand-new monthly series, Pastor Ayo Agunloye begins a careful study of the pleasure, the power, and the peril of indulgence on ReflectionsTuesday, drawn from themes in the Your Potter’s House devotional.
This first message sets the tone by examining the most disarming quality of indulgence: its subtlety. It does not arrive announcing itself as a master. It slips in quietly—as a need, a small treat, a harmless habit—and only later reveals what it truly is.
Indulgence does not come directly as a master. It first comes as a need, then through repetition it gains power.
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode Below
This is a message to listen to slowly and examine your own heart by. It does not condemn—it exposes, gently, the small things that may already be ruling us.
📖 The Base Text: 1 Corinthians 6:12
The entire teaching rests on Paul’s words:
“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.”
Pastor Agunloye draws out the heart of this verse: many things are permitted, yet not everything that is permitted is profitable—and nothing, however lawful, should be allowed to gain power over the believer. The settled resolve of a disciplined life is simple:
I will not allow anything to have power over me except God.
🍃 A Working Definition
The message offers a clear, usable definition so that listeners can recognise indulgence the moment it appears:
Indulgence is the act of yielding to desires beyond God’s intended boundaries.
This happens in two ways:
- Lawful desires taken too far, or
- Unlawful desires embraced without restraint.
Crucially, Pastor Agunloye stresses that indulgence is not only about sin. A person who has left behind obvious vices can still be deeply indulgent—because indulgence attaches itself just as easily to good, lawful, and even spiritual things.
💓 More Than a Moral Issue
One of the sharpest insights of the episode is that indulgence operates far beneath the surface of “right and wrong.”
Indulgence is not just a moral issue. It is a heart issue, a lordship issue, a formation issue, and ultimately a worship issue.
The questions it forces are searching ones:
- Who is ruling your heart?
- Who is in charge?
- What pattern is quietly forming in your life?
Because what we repeatedly choose eventually begins to choose us. As the pastor put it memorably:
What we enjoy begins to enjoy us. What we once had power over begins to have power over us.
💔 Indulgence as a Disorder of Love
At its core, the message describes indulgence as a disorder of love. It shows up in two forms.
First—loving something more than God. Pastor Agunloye uses the example of football. Watching a match is not a sin and not a moral issue. But when the match falls at the very hour set apart for prayer, fellowship, or evangelism, and the believer chooses the screen over that appointment with God, the heart’s true ranking is revealed.
God does not want a rival. He cannot accept the remaining ninety-nine while another thing keeps the one space in your heart.
Second—loving something without God’s rule. Here the believer may be willing to surrender the thing when it clashes with God, yet refuses to let God set any boundary on it. So it is pursued in excess—simply because it is enjoyable and affordable, never measured, never restrained.
“You are not allowing God to measure what you need, so the rest of it is a waste.”
⚖️ Even Good and Spiritual Things
Indulgence is so subtle that it can hide inside our virtues. A person can be so spiritual that prayer and Bible study crowd out work, study, or the duties owed to family—turning a genuine good into something lopsided and unbalanced.
Pastor Agunloye points to the Pharisees as the warning case: they obeyed the law, but refused to let God Himself guide that obedience. Their religion grew without boundaries until it hardened into hypocrisy.
Running through the message is the reminder from Ecclesiastes 3:1, that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every purpose under heaven.” Indulgence so often means missing the right proportion and the right time.
The danger is not always doing wrong things—it is doing right things outside the proportion, timing, and wisdom of God.
🧒 Indulgence Toward Others
The teaching makes an important turn here: indulgence is not only what we permit in ourselves, but what we permit in others.
The parent who excuses every fault—“leave the child, he’s just a child”—and the leader who looks the other way rather than correct, are both indulging. The kindness feels gentle in the moment, but it forms a person who eventually becomes enslaved to the very thing that was never restrained.
When you fail to lovingly correct, you do not protect the person—you hand them over to a master they will later be unable to escape.
🍦 Everyday Indulgences
To bring it close to home, Pastor Agunloye names the ordinary places indulgence lives:
- Food and treats—the bowl of ice cream is fine within a boundary; the question is always, “Do I actually need this, or am I simply gratifying appetite because I can afford it?”
- Spending—buying the expensive thing not because it is needed, but purely for enjoyment, blinds us to others who are in need and feeds selfishness.
- The phone and social media—endless scrolling and flipping is offered as a vivid modern example. His challenge: try a phone fast. “Nothing will happen. You won’t even lose business.”
The principle behind them all:
Whatever dominates you rules you.
⚰️ The Solemn Warning: “Dead While Alive”
The episode does not soften the stakes. Quoting Paul’s warning in 1 Timothy 5:6—“she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth”—Pastor Agunloye describes how indulgence can coexist with an appearance of devotion:
A believer may serve faithfully, pray regularly, even excel in ministry—yet if the heart tolerates indulgence, he is no longer fully free to obey, fully alive to discern, or fully available to serve.
Indulgence works quietly: strengthening cravings, making room for compromise, all while the outward life still looks spiritual. Others see devotion; God sees drift.
✝️ The Example of Christ at Jacob’s Well
The clearest model is the Lord Himself in John 4. At Jacob’s well Jesus was genuinely hungry, thirsty, and tired. Rest, food, and water were not sinful—they were His real need. Ordinarily, taking them would not have been indulgence at all.
But an opportunity to harvest a soul arose at that very moment. Had He chosen His own legitimate comfort over that soul, even a lawful need would have crossed into indulgence.
A soul that is ripe today can be rotten tomorrow. Some opportunities will not wait for our appetites to be satisfied.
This is the heart of the matter: indulgence is exposed not by what we want, but by what we are willing to prefer over Godwhen the two meet.
🔍 The Call: Stop and Search Your Heart
The message closes with a direct, practical summons. Indulgence must be confronted while it can still be confronted—because the longer it is left, the harder it becomes to break.
The pastor’s pastoral steps are simple and immediate:
- Identify the habits, comforts, and cravings that quietly direct your time, energy, and decisions.
- Confess them honestly to God in prayer.
- Take one small act of denial today—a fast, an abstaining, a deliberate “no.”
Let your inner man be an altar fit for God’s fire—unshaken, undivided, and wholly devoted.
🌟 Final Reflection
“The Subtlety of Indulgence” is a quiet but searching message. It does not chase after obvious sins; it follows the soft footsteps of small, lawful pleasures that slip in as guests and stay as masters.
Indulgence is not, finally, about ice cream, football, or phones. It is about who holds the authority over your life. The heart after God’s own heart is the one that refuses to be ruled by desire, appetite, or comfort—a heart that lets God set the measure, the boundary, and the timing for everything it loves.
The remedy is not joyless restriction, but single allegiance: to enjoy what God gives, within what God allows, and never to let the gift quietly take the place of the Giver.
The episode ends with a heartfelt prayer:
“Lord, give us a heart, the courage, the help, and the grace to say no to indulgence from now on, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
This is a message to revisit with an honest heart.
Listen again. Examine carefully. And prayerfully ask God for the grace not merely to recognise indulgence—but to lay it down daily.
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