Wish or Do

There is a level of Christianity that never reaches farther than a wish.  It likes the thought of praying, it is impressed by sacrificial giving, it believes in loving hurtful people, it knows it ought to look away when tempted but it just will not make the move.   What good is an "amen" if it has no legs under it?  Would we think it reasonable for a fisherman to bait the hook and never cast the line out into the water or a student to prepare for an exam and never take the test or for a bride to stand at the altar with the man she loves and never voice the vows?  Are we Ananias and Sapphira who wished for the reputation of holiness without the sanctification of the gift?  Our born-again spirit longs to run to the horizons of holy living but our body wants to just go so far and no further.  Like the child standing at the edge of the pool who dreads the first chill of the water, we wait and wait to throw our lives fully into God, afraid of what true holiness will mean.    But those who have gone before us...the Apostle Pauls and the Apostle Peters and the Mary Magdalenes and the Ruths urge us onward and outward.  "Forsake the love of the world" , they urge.  "Abandon yourself to Christ."  Trust Him with the sorrow of leaving behind your chair and chase the dream of living within the wild unknown of God's will for you today.  Perhaps He has something risky and preposterous for you to do at this moment but you sit waiting and waiting for the breeze to blow another way so it will be easier for you.  It will never get easier; only more risky and more preposterous as the hesitation extends beyond the limits set by God.  Now cannot be later if you do not want to go away "sorrowfully"  like the poor young man who was too rich to go beyond the wish of Christianity.

How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?   John 5:44 NIV

The Sin Factor

The miracle of the Cross is not sublime at all!  There is a mistaken teaching that has been passed around for hundreds of years that when Jesus Christ was crucified, he magically erased our sins, blotted them out as it were like divine  suds.  That is not the case at all.  He bore our sins; took them into His own body and they putrefied within Him, sucked the life out of Him, and each one added to His misery.  Why is the Church so content to slough off sin as a relic of our past rather than see it as the great monstrosity of our present.  Each sin we commit today adds to the shame and horror of the crucifixion Jesus endured two thousand years ago.  Only God could do this; bear sins committed tomorrow and not just the ones of yesterday.  As we sin and sin unthinkingly, we strike Jesus ourselves with the whip, drive the stake deeper in though his feet, take the rod and break it more ferociously upon his back and sides.  The sins of today are not nothing; they pry out of Christ's body more blood and break His heart even worse.  We may be free of real guilt but that does not mean Christ is.  He bears them all, the sins of yesterday as well as the ones of today and at some point, won't we just stop it?  Won't we just fiercely reject the notion that we can sin freely and easily and it doesn't matter?  John the Apostle says we don't have to keep sinning willy-nilly; we can put an end to it...not because we are getting better at righteousness but because the Holy Spirit lives in us and empowers us and moans too with the agony we cause Jesus every time we throw our fist up to the Heavens and tell the Lord we will do as we wish.  There is no greater evil in this universe than our own sinning...it is the root of every terrible thing we find all about us.  Certainly your "little sin"  did not tear the earth enough to cause the earthquake out in China but it was sin that diseased the universe and continues to scourge earth and sky.  We are such fundamentalists when it comes to getting our garbage sorted among the various recycling options but do we give the same care to the very sin that brought this mess upon us?  We do not have a population crisis in our world, we have a sin crisis and the multiplication of sin is what is "doing us in".    Pray with great emotion and bitter pain that God would keep you from temptation.  The Christian who truly understands sin will begin to loath every point at which sin enters through him...not because of the cost he pays but due to the cost Christ pays and that hurts dearly.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV