The Magic of the Spell

There is in our time a certain morbid fascination with death icons.  Perhaps it is due to the relative ease with which we can kill ourselves and others.  Satan whispers in our ear and we buckle in the knees, unwilling to take a stand against the lunacy of our age because we are beguiled.  Death and sin walk hand in hand and to love the imagery of one is to be wed to the other.  Sin ushered in death; it was not the other way around.  Sin is the enemy; death it's prostitute.  The sin of man so thoroughly disorients us that we can think there is something magical, mystical about death but every sane person despises death; is nauseated by it.  Rarely does the atheist welcome it; even those who seem oblivious to what lies behind it.  Death is the enemy in every way and we should hate it...but not because it is the object, it is rather the verb.  Sin is where all of the horror resides; where the terror springs forth.  We die because sin is there.  Without sin, death would never touch our lips.  We are wrong when we give death the idol's gaze; take your eyes off death and look at sin squarely.  That is the place where you must give all your attention and make the most of your time now in your hand.  Sin must be faced and hated with all the passion you once gave death.   The Son of Man did not come to raise us from the dead; otherwise He would have just gone about emptying graves.   He came to kill off sin and to do so, He had to die.  He never feared death; it was sin that broke His heart.  When Christ bore your sin to the tomb, He buried death with it.  He is the Resurrection and the Life because He wrecked sin in one final violent blow.  We live a righteous and Godly life not to please God but because we realize just how horribly despicable sin was for Jesus Christ and like the mother who stomps on the head of the viper that has just bitten her child, we in the righteousness of Christ's holy life crush the breath out of each sin we find lying at our feet.  Be done with sin.  Despise its poison.  Hate its smell.  Detest its look.  Make certain of the enemy.

The enemy boasted, 'I will pursue, I will overtake them.  I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them.  I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.'   Exodus 15:9 NIV

Burning

It is sheer lunacy to think you are not inhibited by the spirit of this age.  You are stopped short at nearly every turn by some good or respectable option...a way that seems reasonable and even right.  But it is not what God has told you to do just then and so you drift off imperceptibly from the straight and narrow way.  And when you do, you lose the quiet voice...or at least you lose track of it.  God will not beat you back in place, He will let you drift until it becomes nearly unbearable, this loss of His still, sweet nearness.  It is not some dramatic falling off the wagon that will hurt you most, it is the terrible indifference to the burning flame of the consuming Holy Spirit.  The soul that is not being scorched and seared by God is slowly growing cold and weary.  Only the determined return to the last word from God will catch your heart aflame again in the passionate fires of your loving Lord.  Again, take hold of God in His Word and you will find yourself flowing once more with the Joy of your Salvation. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Genesis 22:7 NIV