Category: sin

Take the Next Turn for Truth

 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

John 8:32, King James Version (KJV)

 

This is one of those verses that seems like a cliché.  It has been sanded down and polished to the point where its beginning to lose its outrageousness and distinctiveness.  It still sounds noble though, and we do respect it.  Typically it is one of the first verses we commit to memory.

But what is it saying?  We  look around and see so much ignorance and fear, even among the ‘educated.’  There is the fear of cancer, the fear of misguided children, the fear of sudden poverty, the fear of growing old, and much more.  It seems human beings are attracted to fear like a moth is to a candle.

Ignorance is just as prevalent.  Many see, but few understand.  We make His message very simple, so all can know.  But the backlash is many are miffed by our simple message.  In Mexico, in one of those pathetic camps, I heard the most anointed gospel presentation I have ever heard in all my years in ministry.  A very young American girl stood up in front 80 kids.  She shared using a glove with five colors of the gospel.  I sat and I wept.  The nearness of the Lord was so strong, and the message was so real.

We are often a confused people. The Bible’s favorite metaphor is that we are misguided and misdirected sheep.  Sheep, mind you!  Much of the time our ignorance doesn’t come out of simplicity.  It comes out of complicating ideas and circuitous understanding.  We think we will be able to latch on to meaning and understanding if only we read difficult books, or take that course in philosophy. We are buffeted by the complexities. (But surely then we will grasp the truth!?)

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  One of the ways we come to recognize truth will be seen in a subsequent freedom.  Only people of the truth have real liberty.  And perhaps that is the best way there is to be a free person.  Bondage to sin is way overrated; ignorance and confusion puts you in terrible servitude to the whims of your sinful desires, and Satan and his kingdom.  But when we comprehend what is truth, it gives us an appetite for even more of His rule in our lives.

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Be the Lord of My Past

“Lord of the Past,” Lyrics by Bob Bennett

To listen, please check out our Broken Believers Music Index at: https://brokenbelievers.com/classic-christian-music-index/

Every harsh word spoken
Every promise ever broken to me
Total recall of data in the memory
Every tear that has washed my face
Every moment of disgrace that I have known
Every time I’ve ever felt alone

Lord of the here and now
Lord of the come what may
I want to believe somehow
That you can heal these wounds of yesterday
(You can redeem these things so far away)
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of the Past
(Be the Lord of my Past)
Oh how I want you to
Be the Lord of the Past

All the chances I let slip by
All the dreams that I let die in vain
Afraid of failure and afraid of pain
Every tear that has washed my face
Every moment of disgrace that I have known
Every time I’ve ever felt alone

Well I picked up all these pieces
And I built a strong deception
And I locked myself inside of it
For my own protection
And I sit alone inside myself
And curse my company
For this thing that has kept me alive for so long
Is now killing me.
And as sure as the sin rose this morning,
The man in the moon hides his face tonight.
And I lay myself down on my bed
And I pray this prayer inside my head

Lord of the here and now
Lord of the come what may
I want to believe somehow
That you can heal these wounds of yesterday
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of my Past
You can do anything
Be the Lord of the Past
I know that you can find a way
To heal every yesterday of my life
Be the Lord of the Past

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Classic CCM Spotlight–Steve Camp

Looks like the boy’s in trouble again
Living much too close to the edge of sin
Now he finds himself where he should not have been
Oh, God, why is your peace so hard to find
And the answer to the questions that haunt my mind?
Oh, Lord, your ways are not like mineAnd it pounds like thunder within my breast
All the anger, all my humanness
And though I call you Lord, I must confess
I’m a stranger to your holiness
A stranger to your holiness

Can we really be what we were meant to be?
Jesus people, living by the Spirit, living free
My heart longs to serve, but wanders so aimlessly
Oh Lord, you deserve every part on me.

Pounds like thunder within my breast
All the anger, all my humanness
And, though I call you Lord, I must confess
I’m a stranger to your holiness
A stranger to your holiness

Hear my cry of desperation
As I see the wickedness of my ways
You alone are my salvation
And, Lord, I’ve learned this one thing to be true Is that the closer I get to you
I see I’m a stranger to your holiness

Don’t want to be no stranger

And it burns like a fire
And it pounds like thunder within my breast
All the anger, all my humanness
And, though I call you Lord, I must confess
I’m a stranger to your holiness
A stranger to your holiness

Don’t want to be no stranger, oh no
Don’t want to be no stranger
Don’t want to be no stranger
Looks like the boy’s in trouble again
Don’t stop loving the stranger

The Sin That Sticks

                     

“If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away,
         And do not let wickedness dwell in your tents.”  NASB

“And give up your sins– even those you do in secret.” CEV

Job 11:14  [in two versions]

 ***

“When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong.”

Eccl. 8:11, NIV

 

We know it, deep inside of us.  Our sin and iniquity, those things that stick to us, must be renounced and stripped away.  I think it’s interesting that Job is working from the assumption that each of us has sin issues.  I don’t think scripture is ever really shocked by the depth of our iniquity.  We are sinners, and we will sin, but the Holy Spirit is never surprised or caught off guard by our sin and deceit.  But we are, most certainly guilty.

This verse in Job emphasizes “renunciation”.  That means relinquishing or repudiating the evil that we love doing.  I think that in Job’s thinking it means abandoning our sinfulness.  We are to let it go, releasing it to the grace of God.  We are not to sin in secret.

We privatize our favorite sins to make ourselves acceptable.  I think that this is a truism:  “We care more for what people think of us, then what God thinks of us.”  Our sin thrives in solitude, its like a warm and humid greenhouse for our evil.  Secretiveness just causes it to grow, our hiddenness is “Miracle Grow” for our darkness and ugliness.

Job is very much concerned I think, by the contagiousness that sin has.  We transmit the sin virus to our brothers and sisters in Christ.  If we have a hidden darkness, we will most certainly sicken those we touch.  Our Churches have been decimated by private and hidden sin.  I’m thing of Achan in Joshua 7.  He secretly desired nice things, and it destroyed him and his family.

What judgement will you bring on to your loved ones, and your church?  What are you hiding?  Often, I have heard questions like that, and it temporarily moves me.  But it seems the change is not permanent (I desperately wish it was.)  But I suggest that you go into your “tent” and bring your deceitfulness out into the full light of day.  And then, put it to a merciless death.