At What Cost?
What is the most expensive thing you own? Your phone? Car? house? Your education (let's be real, university/college is really expensive)?
Think even harder about it.
The most expensive thing I own is my sin. It is so incredibly expensive and it is not something that I could ever work enough hours to pay for. It is not paid with cash, credit, debit, or cheque. It is paid in mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. God did not create an arbitrary list of "DOs" and "DO NOTs" to see if we could and would follow them. No, He laid out a set of essential guidelines for living. His anger towards lying, stealing, cheating, coveting, murder, jealousy, and pride is because every single one of these things, D E S T R O Y S relationships. Every single thing that the Bible labels as sin are the things that God is trying to protect us from. His desire for us, is love, peace, grace, and harmony with Him, but also with all of creation. Sin is the defiant rejection of this love in an effort to satisfy our own selfish desires.
As defined by the Zondervan dictionary sin is anything in the creature which does not express, or which is contrary to the holy character of the Creator. The first sin in the Universe was an act of free will in which the creature deliberately, responsibly, and with the adequate understanding of the issue chose to corrupt the holy, Godly character which God originally endowed His creation.
That definition hits hard. We do things, fully knowing that they are sinful, but do them anyway and the more we do them, the less sinful they seem. Stealing 5 cents is just as big of a sin as murder. Yes, the impact is hugely different, but a sin is still a sin. We have made 'little' sins seem so little that we are used to the 'taste' of them and it no longer seems that bad. Think of it this way, at the start, black coffee tastes bitter and turns people away from drinking it, but if they drink it every day, or twice a day, that bitter taste seems to not be as bad anymore. If they were to only have it once a week, it would still be bitter for a long time. It has become so easy for the world, and us, to dismiss 'little' sins but dismissing them doesn't erase them. God still wishes that we wouldn't do those little sins and we still need to repent and ask for forgiveness for those sins.
Sin will always take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. What price are you paying to continue to sin? By no means can we be perfect, but by knowingly continuing to sin, what are you sacrificing? Are your relationships suffering? Your health? Your relationship with God? Is that sin worth sacrificing those things? When Christ sacrificed Himself on the Cross, He was thinking of you and of me. He paid the cost for our sins, He died a brutal death as a perfect man, for the sins we are committing right now.
Sin is inevitable, we are imperfect humans, but our sins shouldn't keep us from having peace in our life. Repent, take that sin to the Father, ask for the strength and courage to leave that sin in the past. You are not the sins of your past, they don't define you, they haven't taken you too far away from God and if you think they have, then you are overestimating your power, and underestimating God's love for you. Go to Christ, He is waiting for you, go find peace, stop letting your sins cost you more than you bargained for.
If it costs you your peace, it is costing you too much.
Think even harder about it.
The most expensive thing I own is my sin. It is so incredibly expensive and it is not something that I could ever work enough hours to pay for. It is not paid with cash, credit, debit, or cheque. It is paid in mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. God did not create an arbitrary list of "DOs" and "DO NOTs" to see if we could and would follow them. No, He laid out a set of essential guidelines for living. His anger towards lying, stealing, cheating, coveting, murder, jealousy, and pride is because every single one of these things, D E S T R O Y S relationships. Every single thing that the Bible labels as sin are the things that God is trying to protect us from. His desire for us, is love, peace, grace, and harmony with Him, but also with all of creation. Sin is the defiant rejection of this love in an effort to satisfy our own selfish desires.
As defined by the Zondervan dictionary sin is anything in the creature which does not express, or which is contrary to the holy character of the Creator. The first sin in the Universe was an act of free will in which the creature deliberately, responsibly, and with the adequate understanding of the issue chose to corrupt the holy, Godly character which God originally endowed His creation.
That definition hits hard. We do things, fully knowing that they are sinful, but do them anyway and the more we do them, the less sinful they seem. Stealing 5 cents is just as big of a sin as murder. Yes, the impact is hugely different, but a sin is still a sin. We have made 'little' sins seem so little that we are used to the 'taste' of them and it no longer seems that bad. Think of it this way, at the start, black coffee tastes bitter and turns people away from drinking it, but if they drink it every day, or twice a day, that bitter taste seems to not be as bad anymore. If they were to only have it once a week, it would still be bitter for a long time. It has become so easy for the world, and us, to dismiss 'little' sins but dismissing them doesn't erase them. God still wishes that we wouldn't do those little sins and we still need to repent and ask for forgiveness for those sins.
Sin will always take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay. What price are you paying to continue to sin? By no means can we be perfect, but by knowingly continuing to sin, what are you sacrificing? Are your relationships suffering? Your health? Your relationship with God? Is that sin worth sacrificing those things? When Christ sacrificed Himself on the Cross, He was thinking of you and of me. He paid the cost for our sins, He died a brutal death as a perfect man, for the sins we are committing right now.
Sin is inevitable, we are imperfect humans, but our sins shouldn't keep us from having peace in our life. Repent, take that sin to the Father, ask for the strength and courage to leave that sin in the past. You are not the sins of your past, they don't define you, they haven't taken you too far away from God and if you think they have, then you are overestimating your power, and underestimating God's love for you. Go to Christ, He is waiting for you, go find peace, stop letting your sins cost you more than you bargained for.
If it costs you your peace, it is costing you too much.
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