Get Real

I love the challenge to take our Christianity more seriously. It is easy to get comfortable in our routines of devotions, church, work, over and over again.

After the first couple of weeks of our Bible study, I found myself thinking a bit along the lines of "maybe the girls should have done the Pursuit of Holiness too?" I have gone through part of it before, and I know it challenges and convicts.

However, this week in my study I have seen how in some ways, the two studies are paralleled. Maybe ours isn't as intense or in-your-face, but it is challenging me to look at my sin as SIN: bad attitudes and selfishness equal to murder and thievery. Not just a bad habit or a weakness, or another item for the prayer list. Sin, that completely displeases God and revolts His very nature of holiness. Have I really forgotten the childhood memory verse from the Roman road that teaches "the wages of sin is death"? Paul doesn't specify certain sins, he just says, the wages of sin: death.

John Bunyan said, "One leak will sink a ship; and one sin will destroy a sinner." That is all it takes, and everyone fits into the "one" category. Including me.

A challenge for me this week is this thought: "How evil is my sin to me?" Nancy DeMoss included this prayer from the Puritans in the 17th and 18th centuries:

"Unmask to me sin's deformity, that I may hate it, abhor it, flee from it. . . Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the person sinned against." (Underlining added)

My prayer is that I will confront even the "littlest" sin in my life. For the cobwebs of many small, unacknowledge sins clutter and block our view and experience of God's power in our lives as much and sometimes more than great big one. How many blessings have I missed, or caused others to miss because of my bad habit, or laziness? "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9) What a great promise. He will use us, and cleanse us: We just need to get real!