Friday, October 30, 2009

Thoughts on a friday

15If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

1 Corinthians 3:15

I dont want to escape the flames....i want to live a life built upont the foundation of Christ. Sin holds me back, i want it to be purged from my depraved personhood. Only Christ in my life, not other idols or sin.


26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Romans 1:26-32

I realize this is about non-believers, but i do not want to even come close to this. I want to be so far from sin and so close to christ that i am not in danger of becoming a person who merely "escapes through the flames"....what a sad state. That would be the worst possible fate this side of hell. Knowing that i am saved, yet my life was worthless and all i built was burnt away...i want to build a life full of things that will be rewarded in heaven, not for the reward, but for the joy of knowing that i lived my life in Christ and helped others know him by revealing Him through my speech and actions.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Haze of Sin

It seems to me that sin gain be like a haze that slowly creeps in and eventually turns into a permeating fog that impairs your vision and direction spiritually. It normally starts with some possibly innocent actions that turn into a flaming passion for the desire of an action that takes us from God and places us into the idolatry state with said action. This haze of an initial wandering from God reminds me of a haunted forest in which he enter, and eventually cannot find your way out due to the lack of clear vision and no sense of direction. This leads to more and more sin and eventually you are helpless, becoming a slave to the forest that keeps you running around and around or staying stagnant, enveloped by a grimy fog of sin. Take for example a person who chooses to ignore God's warnings and head into an environment that breeds sin. This person, with no accountability, will slowly be squeezed by the constricting nature of sin until their christian walk is nothing more than a shell of its old self. Some may say, this person who lives in a sinful environment and falls into a slave relationship with sin. Bound to this sin, some may say this person is no longer in Christ. Not true, but for another day. This person has become so enslaved to the root of sin, that they cannot beat the power of sin without outside help....Christ first, community second. Christian community is where the spotlight can be shown on sin and help defeat the chains that bind. The light of Christ is enough, but this light is magnified through community. The answer to getting out of the fog, is the foghorn of Christ, the fog piercing light of clarity of the word of God. If you are lost, or bound by sin, the answer lies in Christ and the community found in Christ. It sounds so easy, yet it is a difficult road to march down. I have found that this bondage and thick fog of sin clouds your brain and leads to more and more sin. How do you defeat what seems impossible? Christ and in him stay strong, man up....Nut up or shut up.