Opening Thoughts:
What
is a time that you had to be honest about a mistake, even though it was embarrassing
or scary? How did the experience of admitting your mistake go?
Go ahead and answer this questions in the comments. Don't be shy. We won't hold your mistakes against you. And we might learn something from each others' stories.
Digging In:
Paul
talks about the fact that he was offered mercy, even for some very horrible
sins. He explains that he acted in unbelief. Paul started out an unbeliever,
and became a believer later.
But
he doesn’t say, “I was the worst of sinners.” He said, “I am the worst.”
We
are so often embarrassed by our sins, so we hate to admit them. But here
Paul shows us that Jesus' mercy and patience can be glorified when we are
honest about our wrongdoing.
In
your life, when you take the time to confess your sins to God, (this is a great
practice to do each day) I pray that you find delight in the fact that God
loves you, even though your actions have not been lovely.
But,
we must also be careful not to use Paul’s status as the worst of sinners as an
excuse to live in sin ourselves.
We
want to pray with the father of a boy whose son is possessed by an evil spirit.
He says to Jesus in Mark 9; “I do
believe. Help me overcome my unbelief!”
Even
more, we want to follow this advice:
“See
to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart
that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long
as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s
deceitfulness.”
-Hebrews 3:12-13
Paul
doesn’t say, “Since God has forgiven me of so many things, so you also ought to
go sin.” Instead, in 1 Timothy 1:18-19, we hear an encouragement to fight the battle,
hold onto faith, and have a good conscience.
We are to confess our sins and fight, with God's help, the battle that he has already won. Let us not give in to doubt, or unbelief.
Reflecting:
The
opening question asked you to talk about a mistake. The word “mistake” is not
the same as a sin. But sometimes the world acts like there is no such thing as
a sin, and that we only make mistakes.
How
can this cause problems in our lives?
How
have you seen that way of thinking cause problems?
When I think of a mistake, I think it is something I can make right on my own or fix very easily. Just like when you make a mistake when your writing with a pencil, you can simply erase it. A sin is something more serious, now instead of a pencil mark there is a big ink blot. Now we need someone with whiteout to make our paper perfect again.
ReplyDeleteThis thinking of no sins and only mistakes makes me think I can make everything better again when I really can not.
Thanks for writing Ross.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see this causing a problem is when people have the attitude, "everyone makes mistakes," or "nobody is perfect." and then they use that as an excuse when they want to get past a problem that they caused.
I want to make sure that I am genuinely honest with God about my weaknesses, and admit to him that I do not deserve good things from him. This allows me to actually be grateful for what Christ has done in loving me. And it puts me the right place to encourage others from. I can say, "Let's do this together!" instead of saying, "Why can't you just do better?" or "It's not a big deal."
Our sins are real actions of disobedience. Thankfully the price has been paid!