A man walked up to a preacher and said in mocking fashion, "You say that unsaved people carry a great weight of sin. Frankly, I feel nothing. How heavy is sin? Ten pounds? Fifty pounds? Eighty pounds? A hundred pounds?
The preacher thought for a moment, then replied, "If you laid a four-hundred-pound weight on a corpse, would it feel the load?"
The young man was quick to say, "Of course not; it's dead"
Driving home his point, the preacher said, "The person who doesn't know Christ is equally dead. And though the load is great, he feels none of it"
Reading over many of the recent posts, we are always talking about asking to have the desire for Christ. Please guide us, and focus our hearts on You. Please help me with this sin. We as christians are so hypersensitive to sin. And, the more we grow as christians the more obsessed and aware we become to our sin and place in this world. Quoting G.I. Joe "now we know and knowing is half the battle" ha. We all have gotten so hard on ourselves when we fall, because we of all people should know better. This is also why actually reading your bible is so helpful. You see the pains and struggles of your biblical heros. The scrip I am focusing on is one we have looked at here many times, and it comes from everyone's "boy"....Paul
(dust off your bibles)
Romans 7: 14-25 starts out with this: "For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.......etc" Please read on as you follow this post due to the fact that the bible is a much better teacher than I.
Talk about some inner conflict going on here. We all can relate to these passages and I'm sure you have had this talk with yourself many times. There are many theological opinions on this being the words of a non-christian vs a christian vs Paul himself. I am not going to get into that as it sometimes distracts our focus in this group. Maybe in a later post...
The thing about sin that really pisses me off is how we "commit" the sin. Now that we know the ramifications for that sin it makes it even worse. When you sin, you are making a commitment. You put in effort. It takes a conscious effort to open that porn site up and let the video load up. It takes effort to work on that chick at the bar when you know where it is going to lead. It takes effort to drink so much it ruins your witness. It takes effort to cheat on your taxes. You are taking time out of your day to deliberatly move further away from God. AHHHHHH. Why do we do it?? Who can help with this?
We see the only answer in the later part of Romans 7:25
Oh,wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Jesus is our only hope. That is why we cry out to him. He can help, and has helped all of us in the past and will continue to do so in the future. I hope this message hits home with everybody and we continue to strive to live in the Word everyday with our thoughts, actions, and words. It's not easy, and the bad news is that we are only going to get tougher on ourselves as we grow. But, the good news is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior....Enough said!
ONE
Ty
3 comments:
Park, that's a solid post. We will continue to fail for the rest of our lives... Sometimes I'll just sit and think about the sacrifice that was made for us. I really can't comprehend it... He's everything.
Great word there Parker! Can't wait to run into you again at Target.
Great to hear from you again and my hope is that this becomes a common occurrence. I think it is crucial that we also identify whether we are practicing sin or falling into sin because those are two very different situations. Practicing sin should be a red flag as to how genuine your faith in Christ really is and as for falling into sin, how do you respond after falling into sin? Tyler said it perfectly when he mentioned "crying out to Jesus". When we fall are we quick to try and cover up what just happened or make excuses or are we broken by our actions and therefore run to our Savior crying out for reconciliation? Praise God for His mercy and grace for without which we are doomed!
-TEvans
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