Pushing Sin out of the way

Killing sin should be our ultimate pursuit.  We should not leave any remnant of sin to remain hidden within our mortal bodies.  Because, look at what our sin did to Jesus.  Look at His marred form.  Gaze upon it in deep reflection.  He was bruised, He was crushed, He was disfigured, He was trampled upon, He was pummeled with our sin.  If we truly love Him, we would make it a second by second pursuit to shove the very thought of sin from invading our minds.  Well, Josh, a second by second pursuit is too difficult.  It is near impossible.  Was it impossible for Him, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, to endure complete brutal suffering, the furious wrath of God, in being identified with our sin, becoming sin for us?  No.  He sacrificed everything to endure unfathomable pain and suffering caused by our sin.  Our sin problem was what moved Him from a place of unapproachable glory to become our substitute, and His substitution provoked the very intricacies of destruction that was invoked by our sin problem.  Therefore, demolish sin.  Do not let sin gain a foothold, because Jesus Christ means more to you than temporary pleasure.  Kill it!

Sola Deo Gloria!!!!! 

After reading the really neat blog post above, written by Joshua @ A Warrior's Heart, I got to thinking………Based on the title of the post ‘destroy sin’, I kind of laughed when the thing that popped into my head later was ‘destroy buzz light year, destroy buzz light year’.  Although that is a cute children’s movie, I began thinking about the character of The Evil Emperor Zerg.  He is obviously the ‘enemy’ and wants to destroy/kill Buzz.  In fact, he wants it so much, that he is obsessed with it.  That is all he can think about.

As I thought about Joshua’s post about destroying sin, he said that we should really aim to shove any sin thoughts out of our minds, and that’s where I started thinking about Zerg….. you know, we really ought to be like him, in a sense.  We should want to destroy Sin so much, that we are constantly thinking about destroying it instead of letting it steep in our minds.  We should constantly be reading our radar to see if any thoughts that are going through our heads is sinful or not.  As my brothers would put it, we need to have our machine guns, bazookas, dynamite, grenades, etc, on the ready so that as soon as any red flag pops up on our radar, we can destroy it ASAP.

Well, how do we get a nifty little radar?  It isn’t as easy as buying one at your local Best Buy or Radio Shack and installing with only a screwdriver…   However, it is pretty simple.   What do you need????..........God’s Word.

If we can hide God’s word in our hearts like He tells us to, we will be able to discern whether this new thought that has popped into our head is from God or not.  Obviously Satan isn’t going to just come out and say, ‘you should hate your brother.’ He comes in a bit more sneakily. He comes from behind and whispers softly. ‘Isn’t that whistling your brother is doing really annoying you?  He can be such a dork sometimes. So inconsiderate. You know, you should pray for HIM to change.. I mean, isn’t that what we are supposed to do, be our brother’s keeper?’.  See, he doesn’t like to just barrage you with the real thing.. not just yet.  Eventually with all his little promptings and whisperings, you will soon find yourself hating your brother!

   

However, when we consistently read God’s Word and spend time with Him, we begin to know God in a deeper way, and when we know God in a deeper way, we will know whether such thoughts come from Him or not.  If we knew God, we would know that that little prompting to ‘pray for thy brother in pompous ceremony’ doesn’t come from Him.  God doesn’t work that way.   Instead, He would be prompting us to focus on our OWN sin areas – such as being selfish instead of loving toward our brother.

I said it wasn’t as easy as installing something with a screwdriver. And it isn’t.  Guess what? Satan REALLY doesn’t want us to study, live out, and love God’s word.  So, he is pretty much going to do whatever it takes to get us to not read it.  How? Oh, don’t worry. He’ll make up plenty of excuses.

Like this one I had the other morning.  As I went to bed the night before, I set my alarm earlier than usual so I could spend extra time with God before my day began.  Well, lo and behold, I had a terrible night. I couldn’t sleep very well, so naturally I was tired when my alarm went off.  Although the weather is warming up, it is still pretty chilly in the house in the morning.  So, Satan started popping excuses into my head.  ‘Do I really need to get up? I mean, I could sleep a little longer and still spend time with God.  Oh, it is so cold in here! My bed is nice and warm..’ as I started dozing off again, my mind suddenly jerked awake.  ‘Hey, wait a minute.  I wanted to get up and spend time with my Lord and look at what is happening!’  I hopped out of bed, quietly padded down the hall, and sat down to read from my precious Book.  As soon as I opened the pages and began to read God’s letter to me, all the doubts and problems I had before started slipping away.  The room, though still rather chilly, didn’t seem so bad any more.  I no longer felt tired from my long night awake.

However, even with incidents like this that can be encouraging, faithfully reading your Bible every day can get tough!  Satan isn’t going to just let me go that easily. Instead, he is going to aim at a different place.  It is up to me to decide if I am going to let his arrows pierce my armor or not.

I am proposing a challenge.  I am challenging my blog readers to join me on a journey.  The purpose of this Journey is to read our Bibles faithfully and encourage each other in the Lord.  Each one who decides to take up this challenge will read his/her Bible daily as best they can (if you know you will have a busy day, try to get up a little earlier so that you won’t miss that wonderful time with God!).  Then, once a week, we can go and post on our blogs what we read that encouraged us, what God did in our lives, etc. We will be able to encourage each other to keep reading, and better yet, we will be encouraged by what other’s are learning and reading.

So, who is up for the challenge?

In Christ’s Service,

Sarah

**Edit note:
If you are a reader of this blog but do not have a blog of you own, you are still more than welcome to join up in the challenge.  You can post your thoughts in a comment.  :-) I want this open to whoever would like.