May 11
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows this he will also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)
We have been for the last few months elaborating on the twelve REBUILDING principles outlined in the Overcoming Temptation booklet, principles that have to do with ensuring that we are as strong as possible before temptation comes. These principles are loosely based on the principles outlined in James 4:7-8 that have to do with submitting to God, drawing near to God, cleansing our hands, and purifying our hearts.
But as explained in the Overcoming Temptation booklet, there is also another principle found in James 4:7-8 that has to do with responding to temptation when it comes our way. This is when James says, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The next twelve principles have to do with resisting the devil and responding to temptation once we are confronted with it. The first of these twelve principles related to RESISTING temptation is to recognize the temptation.
On this first point, as noted in the Overcoming Temptation booklet, there are a number of sins that we may be committing on a regular basis, and we simply are not even conscious that they are sins. There are other sins that we are pretty sure are sins, but because of hardness of heart and callousness, we somehow have gotten to the point where we just accept it as normal, and they just don’t bother us anymore. We have sunk to the point where we sin because we don’t recognize something to be sin, or we just don’t care.
Shame on us if we don’t care anymore about any sin. Every sin should be of concern to us, and the more spiritual we are, the more of a concern all sin will be to us. Lack of concern about any disobedience to the Word of God or the leading of God is a sign of immaturity or worse, hardness or heart and rebellion against the Lord. The Rebuilding steps will help address the issues of immaturity, hardness of heart, and open rebellion. We will be discussing the next few days situations where we have become blind to sin, or we are not yet mature enough to recognize that a particular behavior is sin.
Anger, greed, fear, ungratefulness, selfishness, hardness of heart, hypocrisy, being unloving, overeating, overreacting, being ungracious, saying cutting or hurtful things, being uncooperative, being negative, being lazy or unhelpful, being “passive aggressive,” being unwilling to speak up due to fear of what others may say or do, being overly concerned about what others may think of us, being overly concerned about our appearance, investing time and effort into things that will bear no fruit for eternity, being more concerned about things than the souls of others, wasting time, neglecting the scriptures, neglecting our relationships with our spouse or family members, being stingy with our money, tearing down others, stealing little things from our employers (including taking time away from our jobs to do personal things without our employer’s knowledge or permission), looking at others with envy, looking at men or women lustfully, gossiping and saying unkind or even untrue things about other people, coveting others’ goods or spouses or situations in our hearts, and I could go on, are all sin. Yet we do these things regularly as Christians, and we hardly give it any thought!
Review the list above and reflect on your own life. Make a list of sins that you do that you have grown comfortable with and are not pleading to the Lord to remove from you. Ask the Lord to show you if there are any areas that you have sin that you are not addressing. Ask others if need be. Make sure you no longer are ignorant of your sins.