Sep 20, 2007

How are you?

Notice how these days we like to view our moral and ethical failures as mistakes and not sin. The sin word is so yesterday. It brings up the picture of an overweight, sweaty preacher yelling in your face. The word sin brings with it the idea that there is a God who is going to get you.

Mistake on the other hand is something we all do, it is something that we can live with, and when we make a "mistake" all we have to do is try harder. We say, "Ok, I was wrong, I made a mistake, I admit it, so can we all just move on." We call that affair we had "a mistake" and not sin. A mistake that I need to try not to do again, not a sin, because a sin means that there needs to be a change in who I am. Sin means that I have offended more than my wife...I have offended God with my actions.

We want to think of ourselves as "mistakers" and not as sinners. But we all know that we are more than mistakers...we are sinners. Try as we might to put up a front, we know the truth of who we are.

Jesus had an an amazing message which said..."You all are worse than you think you are, but God loves you more than you think he does." God wants us to realize that we are sinners not just mistakers so that we can see how deep his love and grace goes.

I am going to be talking about this very thing this Sunday. If you have been skeptical about church, this is the Sunday for you to be at PC. You may walk away with a whole new view of God and yourself.

If you have any thoughts on this, let me hear them.

1 comment:

Chief Jon said...

Amen!!!

Christianity has been watered down so much that pastors "tickle"the ears of people in their congregations by avoiding the word "sin." They pat them on the head and tell them its ok, you made a mistake then wave them off out of the church to another week of making the same mistakes again until next Sunday.

I was once there before; my heart was so hardened to the truth that I accepted today's religious justifications, patronization (is that a word?) and rationalizations. This message fit into my life, not into the life God wanted for me.

My "path" was so hard that I refused to listen to my father's (who was a godly man and preacher)exhortations on my sinful decisions. It was like I had cotton balls in my ears and horse blinders around my eyes. Little did I know I was heading towards a cliff!

Praise God that his Son revealed himself personally to me several years ago. He open my eyes and ears, and made known that he was always next to me--all I had to do was turn around. He express his love and grace for me--yet emphasized that God's way is the truth I was searching for. Man's thinking has always been tinted with greed and rebellion towards God.

In plain English--what Gos calls sin IS SIN--what human concern it is irrelevant and misleading. A true loving parent will Not lead their child towards a lie or destruction. If we listen to what saying is right and wrong, We Will Thrive!!