Category: sin

Posted in prayer, sin

Praying for wholesome desires

Posted on by elizabethprata

“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” (1 Peter 2:11).

That’s hard to do. My sinful desires are always cropping up, willfully and forcefully. Even Paul had that problem.

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15).

In a way, it is a comfort to read that Paul struggled with this. He wasn’t a superhero, immune to the sins of the flesh and impervious to the influence of the culture. He was a real guy, and he struggled with putting the ‘old man’ down. We are a new creation in Jesus, but as long as we are in the flesh, we still struggle with the sin that wants to influence us to do evil actions.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (Matthew 6:13).

Pulpit Commentary sums up that petition contained in the Lord’s Prayer that we are to make: “The words are a cry issuing from a deep sense of our personal weakness against the powers of evil.”

Personal weakness indeed! For me, it is a total helplessness, the only antidote of which is for the Holy Spirit to aid me. For is is the Spirit which reveals the things of Christ and thus, His holy desires for us. (John 16:14).

Do a word search in an online bible for “desires” and see how often the word appears, to the negative. (1 Timothy 6:9, 2 Timothy 4:3, Ephesians 2:3, Acts 15:29, Romans 6:12, and so on)

The good news for those of us who believe is, the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross means that He broke that domination. (Galatians 5:24). As He gradually sanctifies us, making us a new creation, we will always struggle on this side of the veil, but the Spirit helps us reflect Jesus as He conforms us to His likeness, day by day. (Ezekiel 36:27). The fruits of the Spirit are proof that the new creation in us is growing. (Galatians 5:19-21).

The process isn’t passive. Peter said that this is a war. Sinful desires are waging war in your flesh. They won’t win in the end, because Jesus will perfect us at the resurrection. But meanwhile, these sinful desires have an influence on us because our flesh isn’t glorified yet. So, Peter says to abstain.

A powerful weapon in our arsenal is to pray for wholesome desires. We abstain, or as Joseph did, run. (Genesis 39:11-13). We also submit to the helpful influence of the Holy Spirit by actively praying for Him to substitute the old sinful desires into wholesome ones!

What a great thing, to honor Jesus by praying that He place within our hearts the desires of HIS heart! Doing this glorifies Him. Jonathan Edwards said,

“God’s purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God’s glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory, and that these two are one passion.”

Praying for wholesome desires draws us into that happy circle ever tighter, the center of which is our Holy God, the effectual Spirit, and our faithful and true Savior.

His Goodness to us is infinite and a complete delight to continually discover. He helps us in our need and in our weakness. Thank you Father.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm 136:1)

Posted in death, sin, spirit

One sin feels lonely

Posted on by elizabethprata

Sin always brings destruction and death. Even if you are a Christian, especially if you are a Christian, you are not immune to sin’s temptations nor its effects. Satan will tempt you and tempt you. Jesus paid the price for the penalty of our sin on the cross. After His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us to help us resist sin. But we still battle it.

The bible tells us to kill sin. Romans 8:13 says, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” In other words,

“If ye do not kill sin, it will kill you.”

As believers, we cannot lose our place in heaven due to sin, because Jesus took them unto Himself, but we lose our rewards. 1 Corinthians 3:15 says, “If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”

Due to the nature of sin, I like to say ‘one sin feels lonely.’ In his book “Surviving in an Angry World”, Charles Stanley writes about anger’s link to other emotions. He takes the one sin of anger, and shows how it has a way with linking to other emotions, which become actions. He wrote for example, anger + hatred = rage. Yet the bible says be angry and do not sin, not letting the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26-27). The reason is that this gives the devil a foothold. Another example is anger + resentment = retribution. Yet the bible says ‘vengeance is Mine sayeth the LORD. ‘(Romans 12:9).

Sin is a snare that captures evildoers (Proverbs 29:6). It can happen before you know it. Jesus said that anger in your heart is like murdering in fact, both are sins. What He was saying is that sins begin in the heart, then land on the mouth and once a person gives voice to it, it becomes action. In Good News Club we always used to say that we hope the Lord will be pleased with everything we “think, say, and do.” Because that is the progression of sweet aromatic actions that please the Lord, and that is the same trajectory of sinful actions that displease the Lord.

Let’s say a man is daydreaming salacious thoughts about a female co-worker. His wife sees his pleased, daydreamy look and says, “What are you thinking about?” The man of course can’t say “Another woman” so he says “My golf score last week.” So he adds lying to lust and two sins are born. Then let’s say he does not stop those thoughts and they turn to action. He says to his wife that he is running to the store for milk, and he takes the long way so he can drive by her house. His wife says “What took you so long?” and he says that he stopped to chat with a friend he ran into. Now he has added collusion + deception to his cadre of the sins of lust and lying. They are piling up fast. The final stage is when he flirts with the woman, taking his thoughts and words to action. We have a messy pile of ugly sins now, and one sin doesn’t feel lonely any more.

In the Garden, in Genesis 3, we see that disobedience was born and then right after, blame, shame, and arguing. It did not take long to open the door to a nasty pile of sins in Adam and Eve.

By the time you see a pattern of sin emerge in  a person, you can bet that there are other sins alongside it. Like this iceberg.

Though the sins one sees in a person outside themselves may seem small, the heart is holding a huge pile of sins under the surface.

The Lord gave us the Holy Spirit to help us kill sin. Would you rather deal with a mountain, or a molehill? Molehill of course. Nobody likes to climb Everest when you can simply step over an anthill. Or trap a little fox as opposed to shooting big bad wolf. (Song of Solomon 2:15). No pile of sins are too big for our gracious Lord to handle. He already forgave them at the cross. But please do not let them grow in you. The bigger the mountain of sins in you, the more people are hurt when your sin is finally revealed. Sin has effects on you and on those around you, too.

If you repent, the Spirit will help you in the Lord’s power to resist the sinful inclinations of man. Pray to Him for help in repenting and resisting sin, as soon as it comes to mind.

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. 
(Ephesians 5:11)

And always remember, it was an iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Posted in children, rapture, sin

How society is polluting the children with sin instead of correcting them

Posted on by elizabethprata

I am writing two other blog entries for today and tomorrow that are related to the season, but in between this has been on my mind. Kids.

I work with small children. I used to be a teacher and now I am a teacher’s aid. I love being around kids, listening to what they say, watching what they do. I love how they learn, and best of all is being a part of opening up the world of literacy for them. Even tying their shoes and wiping their noses is satisfying because it helps them. I especially love working with them in the faith setting, teaching them about Jesus, because their faith is sure and innocent.

Though children are not sinless, they are declared innocent. In Deuteronomy 1:39 we read about little ones who have no knowledge of good or evil. There’s a point in life when you don’t have conscious knowledge of good or evil, you haven’t reached that condition of accountability before Holy God. Isaiah 7:16 says the same. Based on those verses and others that tell me there is an age of accountability, and prior to that, a child’s deeds are not held against him.

But children DO sin. Oh, yes. Make no mistake. I believe that in former times, children were more innocent and less sinful and willful early in their lives than they are now. The rampant sin that has polluted the earth has touched the hearts of children at an earlier and earlier age. When I began teaching in 1982 I never saw what I am seeing now. Let me give some examples.

There is a video going around called something like ‘bed time bandit’. It is a short video of a two-year-old boy who is covetous of his sister’s pillow pet. He had kept going into his sister’s room to steal it at night, so the parents said to the sister, ‘lock your door.’ (Nothing is said of how they punished the brother for stealing it in the first place.) Even though she locked it, the sister still insisted the brother was stealing the pet. So the parents set up a video camera to watch what was happening at night. Not to be thwarted in his coveting of the item, the boy devised a plan when confronted with the locked door. The video depicts what unfolded…


The boy emerges from his room at night, gripping a pair of opened fingernail clippers. He carefully closes his bedroom door, I surmise so that the light wouldn’t alert anyone. He spends a few moments carefully picking the lock of his sister’s door, and when successful, goes back to his room to replace the clippers. I surmise he did this so as not to be caught with the tools of breaking and entering. Then he goes in, grabs the toy, and scuttles out, all the while silent in his footie pajamas and silently closing all the doors behind him. The video ends with his parents laughing.

I’m not laughing.

The boy devised a plan to thwart his parents’ orders, and to illegally enter a place he was told not to go to get a thing that was not his. He thought about this plan for a while, so we have malice aforethought. He was studious at every step of the way, in replacing the clippers, being quiet, and closing the doors, so we have stealth.

How often does a two-year-old have the fine motor skills to pick a lock? How much mental energy was given over to decide which tools would do the job? He didn’t choose a knife, or a screwdriver or a fork or a stick. He selected just the right tool because he spent time thinking about it first. How often does a two-year old have the patience to perform a minute fine-motor task, in the dark??

What happens when the kid is sixteen and he wants some beer from a locked store? Or to change his grades which are on a computer behind a locked office?

And what does that tell the sister, that she has to lock her door against her brother just to be safe in her own home? And how safe is it to have a child sleeping in a locked room…what if there is a fire?

Here is second example I thought was repugnant. It is called “Tooth Fairy fake-out.” A little girl who has lost her tooth explains to her mother that she has devised a plan to ‘trick the tooth fairy’. She will trick the tooth fairy because she wants to keep the tooth but she still wants the money.  She decided to roll up a piece of paper and put that under her pillow instead. She is quite happy with that plan.

Until the next day, when instead of the money she expected, she received a ‘ticket’ from the tooth fairy. She was furious.

Thirdly, on the playground I overheard a discussion. Several kindergartenters were fussing because one of them had been told that they could not be on stage. (There is a concrete pavilion with picnic tables they use for various purposes). The child was mad because she had been told by another child that she “was a no-talent and couldn’t be on the stage with the rest.” She was angry and said that she had plenty of talent. I pondered that for a while. I wondered, where do kids get the idea of talent and no talent and stages and performing and talk to each other like that?

Ohhh. Now I see- it is the effects of the Simon Cowell-like barbs and insults. Kids watch these reality talent shows like Dancing with the Stars and The Voice and American Idol and watch the adults shame each other at another’s expense. Then they repeat that behavior on the playground.

I don’t blame the kids. They’re kids. And the  pervasive influence of instant video that captures moments like these and social media which repeats them are also helping to serve up sin on a silver platter. In 1982 when I began teaching, there were no video recorders, or internet. I’m sure that these behaviors still happened, but they weren’t replicated and they certainly weren’t celebrated, or rewarded!

No, kids are kids. They model their behavior after watching us and by what they are taught. Sometimes they are actively taught to sin, as in the above cases.

How so, you ask? Well, the family of the child who tried to cheat the tooth fairy was given $100,000. They were the big winners of the America’s Favorite Video contest and feted with confetti and streamers and prizes and affirmation. “Cheat and lie, win money!”

Not the tooth fairy family, but you get the idea…

It isn’t the kids fault, but parents. They are teaching sin, accepting it, laughing about it, and getting money for it. Kids aren’t sinless but they learn how to handle sin from us. And we are failing them.

I pray for the rapture to come. I say that unashamedly. What Christian would not want to be with Jesus in person, given a choice? Away from sin and disease and in glory and perfection? But I also pray for it on behalf of the children. They are suffering so badly. Not just the ones who are actively being abused, neglected, abandoned and killed in the womb. (or outside of the womb). But I pray for the ones who are abused by sinful adults who do not teach the child the way he should go. (Proverbs 22:6). Who celebrate their sin and profit from it instead of teaching them God’s statutes.

“Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.” (Proverbs 29:17)

Won’t it be a beautiful thing when children can be brought to the Lord Jesus in the Millennium, and they can learn directly from Him?!?!

Meanwhile, I say that the children are polluted with sin from birth and it is up to us to train them in righteousness, not capture it on video and celebrate it. Why pollute the children more?

Posted in adam, discernment, Eve, Garden, holy, sin

Discernment lesson- A rabbi’s new twist to the Adam and Eve story

Posted on by elizabethprata

The attack on Genesis 3 is an old attack and that is for a reason. It is the basis for everything, it is the foundation for all that comes after. It is the beginning of sin, rebellion, and God’s interaction with man. Humans want to deny their culpability in their rebellion against God, so they twist and deny and slyly change the bible’s foundational doctrine…like this rabbi does.

In discernment, first and foremost, any religious person who says that have a “new twist” on the ancient word is lying. In essence, they are saying, ‘I, and I alone, have found the one and only interpretation that escaped everyone else for 3 thousand years.’ Not.

But here is Rabbi Manis Friedman telling his story in an essay titled
A New Twist to the Adam and Eve Story

Right away, discernment bells should go off in your mind.

Additionally, I will make a comment that is sure to rankle some. Our friends, the Jewish scholars and Jewish people, are not saved. They are not under the covering of blood that saves them from the wrath of Gods and are not brethren as defined in the bible (Matthew 12:50). They may be expert in the history of the Jewish people, but they do not have the indwelling Holy Spirit in them because they have not believed on Jesus’s death and resurrection as the Messiah and become saved. Therefore it is easier for satan to work in them. We pray for all the lost, and we know that God is not finished with His people the Jews and His nation Israel, they will come to national salvation at the end of the Tribulation. (Zechariah 12:10, Revelation 7:1-8). But unless a person is a Messianic Jew, they are not saved and therefore have no clue about the whole plan of God in the Old Testament to the New.

I want to link to and excerpt some part from the Rabbi’s piece in the Huffington Post today. He made some statements that a careful reading will show what he is about.

He begins by restating the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. So far, so good. He does say that “within an hour of those explicit instructions,” that they ate the fruit but the bible does not say how long of an interval occurred between God delivering the instructions and the time they ate of the fruit of the tree. It could have been long and it could have been short, as little as a day. Butthe bible does not say it was an hour. So he took a liberty there.

Then he asks, ‘Hasn’t it ever struck you as a bit odd? Why would G-d choose to start the Torah with such a horrible story?”

He didn’t. He started the Torah with the book of Bereishit, which we know as Genesis 1, and the Creation. He began by revealing His power.

Now, asking questions of the bible is good. I ask all the time, not to doubt (like Zacharias) but to wonder (like Mary) ,(Luke 1:5-17) My questions are like, “Wow, I wonder why He did that? I want to study that more!”

But the question the rabbi asked about beginning the story of human history seems more like Zacharias’s question to me, “hath God really said…” More of a doubting nature, questioning the event itself. God began the story there because that is where the story began. Period.

Then the rabbi says the Garden was “a place where the evil inclination cannot even exist, and after being given just one simple commandment they break it within the hour.”

First, he is obviously wrong. Evil inclination did exist, because satan was there. He had already fallen and he was evil through and through. (Ezekiel 28:15). Unless the rabbi does not believe that the serpent speaking to Adam and Eve was satan, which he was.

And there is that ‘one hour’ thing again. The rabbi makes it sound that because Adam and Eve disobeyed so quickly, something else must have been going on. ‘They couldn’t have been so weak as to be unable to resist one ‘simple’ command… Come on….’ However the rabbi’s sly approach denies the strength of the sin nature, which is exactly what God was showing us here.

And then his sly work deepens. He writes, “And if there is no evil inclination in the Garden of Eden, how could they have transgressed this one commandment, and so soon?! If G-d Himself told us to eat from any tree that we wanted, except for one, wouldn’t we listen?”

The rabbi builds upon his false premise that evil couldn’t have existed in the Garden, and cements his proposition that because it happened so quickly something else was happening. He is essentially saying that man has the internal strength to resist sin and to perfectly listen to God on our own. Now his essay is really getting deep into treacherous waters of non-belief in the meaning of the plain text.

Rabbi: “But when He asks Adam to refrain from eating from a tree, Adam’s response is, “I’ll try”? That can’t be; it’s not possible.”

Where has the rabbi been for all of human history? Why does he not take the example from his own people’s history, one of continuous disobedience to what God said not to do?! It’s not possible? Of course it’s possible, it happened over and over! But he is chipping away at the authority of God’s word by denying the fact that we succumb to sin so easily when tempted.

Then the rabbi says that God is a bad psychologist. “It is also bad psychology. When you tell a child, “Don’t touch that crystal vase,” you do not add, “if you do…” What do you mean “if you do”? You don’t! You never introduce the possibility that they will break your rules. When you say, “If you do…” you’re in effect saying that it’s possible that they will touch that vase.”

So God is never to tell us not to do anything against His wishes because we’re children and He knows we will disobey anyway? Doesn’t that make God into a slave to OUR sin-nature?

Rabbi: “And where did Adam learn to blame someone else? His automatic response to G-d’s query was that Eve had forced him to eat the fruit. This man was only a few hours old, having been created just that morning, and he’s already blaming others?”

If the rabbi read Genesis 3:7 he would know that after they disobeyed, a sin nature came alive into them, their eyes were opened, and they knew shame. Before the Fall, they did not know shame (Genesis 2:25) After the Fall, they did. And blame, too, obviously. “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Genesis 3:7).

Adam did not remain sinless/righteous after he disobeyed. He then knew the full pantheon of good and evil, just as God had told Adam would happen when He said not to eat the fruit. (Genesis 2:16)

Rabbi: “The whole story as we know it appears quite problematic. But the main problem is, if you would want to start teaching your child the Torah, would you start with this story? Even if it did happen, why talk about it? And right in the beginning of the book? Maybe the story isn’t all that simple.”

Here it comes. Wait for it…

“Adam and Eve consciously remembered being in heaven when they were informed that their souls would have a special spiritual mission to fulfill in a physical world.”

Really? I can’t find that in my bible.

In order to create a new doctrine, and that is what the Rabbi is doing here, you need to stray off the path. But false teachers don’t grab you by the hand and yank you off the path, They lead you gently. He has brought us to the edge of the path with his questions and false premises and building on those premises as if they were true. Sly questions incrementally drift us to the edge of the narrow road God set before us. Hebrews 2:1 says we must pay careful attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away. Illegitimate questions nudge us off the way and soon we are drifting to the edge. Eventually, the false teachers leave the left foot on the path but take their right foot off it into new territory. It doesn’t feel totally unfamiliar to you because one foot is still on familiar terrain. This is to get you to feel comfortable with the new terrain before he leads you totally off it. Now we take one foot off the path on our veering away into new doctrinal territory.

He sets up quite an argument, beautiful in its false logic, superficially logical in all its evil. Read it. I will post the summary statement here–

“Adam wanted to ensure that his children would all remain righteous. How do you do that? Don’t eat from the tree. If you don’t eat from the tree then you’ll stay in the Garden of Eden, you’ll never die, there will be no sins, and all of your children will be pious. Eve didn’t want that. She wanted her children to be forced to struggle, to have to repent for their inevitable shortcomings. She eventually convinced Adam that one who must struggle to find G-d is worthier than a naturally righteous man.”

Yeah, because who wants that. Perfect obedience to God and living a perfect, righteous life in perfect fellowship with Him? Nah.

Rabbi Friedman says that when God asked Adam if he had eaten the fruit, God was not angry. He was smiling, happy that the humans had figured it out. God is a riddler and woman is clever.

What the rabbi is saying in his piece are several things:

1. God tricked humans with a double-back command
2. Adam was too dumb to figure it out
3. Eve was smart and led the man to the right conclusion, (incidentally paving the way for feminism)
4. A typically Pharisaical hierarchy is cemented by this doctrine, that all Jews are equal, but some (struggling righteous Jews) are more equal that others (naturally righteous Jews). (HT to Animal Farm by George Orwell)
5. Some men are naturally righteous (not so says Romans 3:10)
6. Pure, unadulterated grace is less desirable than man’s self-effort at righteousness

Let’s get back to the beginning for a moment. The Rabbi had asked, ‘is it really that simple’? And proceeded to confuse things. But it is that simple. God said not to do something. They did it. He was angry. He proved He was angry by punishing them with departure from the garden and cursing all participants. He told them they were lost by promising them a savior. It is so very clear.

Back to the Rabbi: “Eating from the tree was not an act of rebellion against G-d, nor was it succumbing to their appetite, for they had no desires other than to serve G-d. The choice they had was between one holiness and another. Their motivation came from their G-dly souls. It is known as the “sin” of the tree for sin means stepping down from an innocent place to a lower place, and they certainly did — not out of weakness but out of devotion to their mission.”

Of course they had desires other than to serve God, The verse in Genesis 3:6 says so.

And in another HT to Orwell, the rabbi’s treatise on the “new” way to see the story of Adam and Eve is typical doublespeak. The rabbi’s evil conclusion- Rebelling against God is holy.

Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. For example, in Orwell’s book 1984, we learn that in the dystopian, atheistic world of Orwell’s future, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

In Rabbi Friedman’s world, Sin is Holy.

Hath God really said…?

Posted in gay, homosexual, Jim Nabors, sin

Jim Nabors being with a partner for 38 years in no way legitimizes homosexual marriage as a proper relationship

Posted on by elizabethprata

I wrote yesterday of the news that television actor and singer Jim Nabors, 82, married his long-time homosexual partner. I know that one thing that will strike the unbelieving world about the Jim Nabors marital news is the reported length of time he and his homosexual friend have been partners. The news reports were that they have been together for 38 years.

One thing that the non-believing supporter of homosexuality denies is the penchant for gays to hitch quick and divorce quicker, or for single gays to hop from bed to bed. Gays say that they are not defined by sexual activity, but they belie that when they fail consistently to be monogamous. Their promiscuity s legendary.

The statistics on sexual promiscuity among homosexuals are staggering. 83% of the homosexual men surveyed estimated they had had sex with 50 or more partners in their lifetime, 43% estimated they had sex with 500 or more partners; 28% with 1,000 or more partners. They are promiscuous, and rarely stay with one partner for long. (source)

So no doubt, people will be using the unhappy couple’s self-stated lengthy partnership as a legitimizer for such perverse relationships. They say, “It’s love!” or, “See, it’s the same as heterosexual marriages!” However, whether promiscuous one-night stands or a 38 year apparent partnership, homosexual relationships are still sinful.

Length of time being involved in a sin is no credit to that sin. It is still sin. Just because you have been sinning longer is not a reason or a basis to say that it is now legitimized. If someone has been embezzling funds from your corporation for 38 years, do you forgive it, saying its length of time as an ongoing event means that it must be credible by now? Of course now. Embezzlement is a crime, just as homosexuality is a crime- against God.

As a matter of fact, length of time as an active homosexual is more of a reason to say they are condemned. In the progressive Wrath of Abandonment as outlined in Romans 1, the Lord hardens the heart and gives them over to their sinful desires of the body (Romans 1:26; Psalm 81:12).

What does it mean, exactly, that God gives them over?

Because they refused to honor God, He gave them over to the vilest of devices. It shows to what depths they fall without God. They became abandoned to the last degree. The very fact that they are a homosexual or a lesbian is illustrative of the fact that they have been given over by God. There is only one further step: being given over to their depraved mind. At that point they cannot even think right. (Romans 1:18-32). It is the end of the line.

Being given over means that if a person persists in denying the sovereignty of God for a period of time, after repeated warnings, God allows the person’s sin to take them to its inevitable conclusion. In the case of Pharaoh, God gave warnings in the form of judgment plagues, and then hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

This is because Pharaoh refused to listen, and each time he refused to listen, Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex 7:22, Ex 8:14, Ex 8:19, Ex 8:32, Ex 9:7). After a certain point, God calls it. He gave Pharaoh over to his sin.

God is just. He is not a doormat nor a patsy. After a certain point of no return, He gives you over.

In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, God gave the king repeated warnings in the form of a dream. The final  dream came with a dire warning. Even then, God gave the king one year to repent. At the moment Nebuchadnezzar said he built the city himself and he gave himself the glory, denying God once again, Nebuchadnezzar was struck in judgment. The difference between Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar was that when Nebuchadnezzar came out of his insanity period, he repented and gave God the glory. Pharaoh never did. Who knows how many more warnings and dreams would have been given Nebuchadnezzar, if any, but it is wise to heed His warnings the first time. God is merciful in not smiting us at birth for being sinners against Him. He is long-suffering, allowing our sins to progress until He decides to either regenerate us into new life, or harden us into spiritual death. He is patient, for example, waiting a full year for Nebuchadnezzar to repent. God is love, we are made in His image. But he is also just, and He judges us.

I am not saying a homosexual person has no chance of being saved. Any person can repent and will be welcomed into the Kingdom of God. What I am saying is that the longer you go in not addressing your sin, the more chance that God will give you over. We don’t know when that moment is. He does this with nations. It is called The Wrath of Abandonment. Romans 1 outlines the progression.

He also does this with individuals. There IS a point of no return. Homosexuality is the signal that it is very far along in the path of no return.

GotQuestions writes,

“[I]f we don’t confess our sins, they have a cumulative and desensitizing effect on the conscience, making it difficult to even distinguish right from wrong. And this sinful and hardened heart is tantamount to the “seared conscience” Paul speaks of in 1Timothy 4:1-2. Scripture makes it clear that if we relentlessly continue to engage in sin, there will come a time when God will give us over to our “debased mind” and let us have it our way. The apostle Paul writes about God’s wrath of abandonment in his letter to the Romans where we see that the “godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth” are eventually given over to the sinful desires of their hardened hearts (Romans 1:18-24).

A lengthy homosexual relationship might be lauded as “love” in secular (sinful) society but that is no commendation at all. It is actually a danger to their soul and eternal destiny! GotQuestions again–

“So, what then is the antidote for a heart condition such as this? First and foremost, we have to recognize the effect that this spiritual disease has on us. And God will help us to see our heart’s condition when we ask Him: “Search me O God, and know my heart…see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:2-24). God can heal any heart once we recognize our disobedience and repent of our sins. But true repentance is more than simply a resolute feeling of steadfast determination. Repentance manifests itself in a changed life.”

Hallelujah that our mighty God changes our lives away from sin and toward righteousness! He can and He does. Every day.

http://www.flickr.com/photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via photopin cc/bestrated1/191150805/

Posted in repent, sin, snare, trap

Sin is a snare

Posted on by elizabethprata

“Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.” (Ecclesiastes 9:12)

The bible speaks of snares a lot. Sins, people, doctrines all can trap a person and there they stay in the snare of sin, and then they die. I heard a sermon recently and the pastor was speaking of unaddressed sin in a person’s life. Whether you’re a believer or a non-believer, we all sin and we all need to repent. Of the believer, if you have sinned but not repented, the pastor preaching the sermon said that on the day you die or the day you are called home to the Lord in the rapture, you will be flash-frozen in your sin. THAT will be the status upon which you stand before Him at the Bema seat, giving an account of yourself. There will be no more chances. When Jesus calls an end to your days or an end to the Church Age, there you go with all your unrepented sins with you.

Now, that should give you pause to let your sins go unaddressed, lol!

There are frequent mentions in the bible about snares. Sins are snares that trap us. (1 Timothy 3:7). Enemies are snares that trap us. (Judges 2:3). False doctrines are snares that trap us. (Proverbs 13:14). False gods are sins that trap us. (Exodus 23:33; Deuteronomy 7:16). Idols are a snare. (Psalm 106:36).

Since many of us are no longer living in an agricultural environment, trapping food for our sustenance or even hunting it for pleasure, let’s talk about what a snare is, how it works, and what happens when you’re caught in it.

We all know a snare is a trap. It traps birds and smaller mammals. But let’s go deeper into understanding the metaphor of sin being a snare.

Snares are anchored cable or wire nooses set to catch wild animals such as squirrels and rabbits. A snare is essentially a loop that is set up to tighten around an animal as it passes through. Snares are one of the simplest traps and are very effective. They are cheap to produce and easy to set in large numbers. A snare traps an animal around the neck or the body; a snare consists of a noose made usually by wire or a strong string. The snare can be laid down on the ground and camouflaged, or upright like the Wiki Books illustration at left.

Did you catch that? Snares are simple, easy to make, lots of them can be made at once, and they are effective. That is how sin works. Sometimes we think of the devil as an unholy being with super-complicated methods. And he does indeed, and we are not unaware of his schemes (2 Corinthians 2:11), but really, why waste energy on complicated stuff when a simple sin-snare is so easy to set up?

A person will become captured in a snare and right away things get a lot worse. The animal fights for its life and even more damage can be done to him as he struggles. David was “only” an adulterer, until he was about to get caught, Then he became a murderer too. One sin piles on top of another. Lance Armstrong was “only” a doper, until he was about to be exposed. Then he became a liar, a brutal revenger, an intimidator and an enemy to his friends. His sin-snare tightened its noose-like grip the more he struggled against exposing the first sin the more sins got piled on top.

Do you see the snare at right? It is almost invisible, and an inattentive rabbit wanting just to take a mouthful of the juicy and tempting moss will get caught! It’s like when we say, “one visit won’t harm me…one drink will be OK…if I take just $5 from the till no one will notice…”

Rolling snare, Alderleaf Wilderness College

There was a chapter in the book Watership Down by Richard Adams called “The Shining Wire”. It was a fiction book about rabbits looking for a new place to set up a warren, due to imminent development of their pasture. A brave band of rabbits set out to find a place and they came to a warren where all the rabbits were fat and sleek and had plenty to eat. However as they stayed a while, visiting, they noticed that the rabbits exhibited strange behavior. They focused on making art and poetry instead of hunting and procreating, never mourned the sudden disappearance of friends, and refused to listen to stories about Rabbit God.

It turned out that the rabbits had capitulated, allowing themselves to feed on the food that the farmer put out, knowing full well that he also set out snares and took some from their number frequently.

The knowledge of their deadly compromise enslaved them, and after a while, made them crazy. They were fed, but at a terrible price. No rabbit in that warren could ever speak of the shining wire.

The rabbits became dependent on the overlord that will eventually kill them, but they still preferred to live and die by the snares than to be free. Although they had the illusion of freedom, they all knew deep down that the snares are ever- present, and they doom themselves the moment they make the decision to live off of food the farmer gives them. (source)

It is like that for the unsaved. They all know that they are feeding on food (sin) that is handed to them by someone who wants their death, but they focus on other things, refuse to speak of what their sin is doing to them bodily and spiritually, and hope that that day is not their day to become trapped and die. And they are all a little crazy. As Dan Phillips wrote at Pyromaniacs, “Sin makes you irrational, insane, crazy, nuts (cf. Genesis 3—Revelation 22; especially, for instance, Genesis 3:8; Numbers 13-14; Matthew 12:24; Ephesians 4:17-19).”

The Lord Jesus Christ freed us from our original sin, and continues to free us from the snare of our daily sin. When we repent, He opens the snare and we hop free! Soooo, repent! And don’t delay. You don’t want to carry them to heaven and lay them down at the throne and explain them all to Jesus, do you?

Blessed be the Lord,
who has not given us
as prey to their teeth!
We have escaped like a bird
from the snare of the fowlers;
the snare is broken,
and we have escaped!
Our help is in the name of the Lord,
who made heaven and earth. (Psalm 124:6-8)
Posted in forgiven, jesus, redemption, sin

Be encouraged–God DOES NOT remember your sin

Posted on by elizabethprata

My dear brethren who are laboring under the tsunami of the world’s sin, grieving over hating your own, and mourning over others’- I offer a small message of encouragement, by way of a large message from  Charles Spurgeon.

This Age of Grace is rapidly accelerating to the time of the end and the resumption of the Age of Law and wrath. Gaps are widening, we see that clearly. Believer vs. non-believer never had less in common. Poor vs rich were never more far apart. Those who are strengthening versus those who are apostasizing were never more numerous. It will all deepen and widen more tomorrow…and tomorrow… and tomorrow…

So those of us who are large in number globally but perhaps few in groupings locally, are daily made more aware of our sin. We thus are ever more knowing of our own wretched condition, which is forgiven sinner. We’re always heaping gratitude to Jesus when our sins prick up more vividly to our heart as each craven day passes. Sometimes we hate our own sin so much that we totter, weakened as we see the horrific face of it. But far better than we feel weak in our heart, fainting in knowledge of our sin, than our conscience be weak, failing to feel its prick.

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

Here is the encouragement. Charles Spurgeon preached a message to his congregation in 1882, called “God’s Non-Remembrance of Sin.” Far from being antiquated or irrelevant, it is even more alive today than it was when it was delivered, I dare to say. The bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit and it’s is 2000 years old and still relevant. In the same way, any sermon delivered by wisdom of and submission to the Holy Spirit is also alive today, and fresh.

The sermon I linked to is 8 pages long and wonderfully concise and encouraging. If you are feeling low because of your sin and the state of the world, if hopelessness starting to fray the edges of your mind and heart, take hope from this sermon. Our sins are not only forgiven, but forgotten!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All too often we focus on our sin and plead with the Spirit for strength to withstand them another day. We confess and repent, and rely on His Goodness and Grace to forgive, but we still remember. He does not!

I’ll excise a few pieces of Spurgeon’s sermon for you:

“What the Law asserts, the understanding, also, supports, for within the awakened man there is the memory of his past offenses—and on account of these his conscience passes judgment upon his soul—and condemns it even as the Law does. “God must punish wickedness,” is the utterance of conscience. “He were not the judge of all the earth if He did not do right and if He does right, He must visit my transgressions with the threatened penalty.” Thus, the thunder of Sinai is echoed by conscience. Meanwhile, many natural impressions and instincts assist and increase the clamors of conscience, for the man knows within himself, as the result of observation and experience, that sin must bring its own punishment.”

“Thus, for once, the devil craftily cooperates with the Law of God and with conscience—these would drive men to despair, but Satan would go further and compel them to despair as touching the Lord, Himself, so as to believe that pardon for transgression is quite impossible.”

“With the desponding I shall try to deal at this time and may the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, help me to console them–“

“Our first theme is this—THERE IS FORGIVENESS. Our four texts all teach us that doctrine with great distinctness. Is not that a sublime assurance, “I, even I, am He that blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and will not remember your sins”? Does not Paul put it sweetly as from God’s own mouth, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” Remember how the Psalmist, in the 130th Psalm makes this a special note of thanksgiving “There is forgiveness with You that You may be feared.” Let us adore the Lord because He delights in mercy!”

“Secondly, THIS FORGIVENESS IS TANTAMOUNT TO FORGETTING SIN. This is a wonder to me, a wonder of wonders—that God should say that He will do what, in some sense, He cannot do—that He should use speech which includes an impossibility and yet that it should be strictly true as He intends it. God’s pardon of sin is so complete that He, Himself, describes it as not remembering our iniquity and transgression.”

“The Great Father’s heart is not brooding over the injuries we have done—His infinite mind is not revolving within itself the tale of our iniquities. Ah, no! If we have fled to Christ for refuge, the Lord remembers our sin no more! The record of our iniquity is taken away and the Judge has no judicial memory of it. Sometimes you have almost forgotten a thing and it is quite gone out of your mind—but an event happens which recalls it so vividly that it seems as if it were perpetrated but yesterday. God will not recall the sin of the pardoned.”

“I, even I, am He that blots out your transgressions for My own sake,
and will not remember your sins.”
Isaiah 43:25.
“For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Jeremiah 31:34.
“For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their
iniquities will I remember no more.”
Hebrews 8:12.
“And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
Hebrews 10:17.

Please take heart, beleaguered ones! Please do read all of Spurgeon’s gem. Spurgeon ends it this way:

“Always repent and always praise the Lord. Honor the forgetfulness of God in not remembering your faults and, from now on, tell this blessed news to everyone you see—there is forgiveness, such forgiveness as was never heard of until God, Himself, revealed it by saying of His people, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” God bless you dear Friends, from now on and forever. Amen.”

photo credit: Sukanto Debnath via photopin cc

Posted in lazarus, miracle, sin

The chief priests wanted to kill Lazarus

Posted on by elizabethprata

“When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.” (John 12:9-11)

“Crowds of the Jerusalem Jews hastened to Bethany, not so much to see Jesus, whom they knew to be there, as to see dead Lazarus alive; and this, issuing in their accession to Christ, led to a plot against the life of Lazarus also, as the only means of arresting the triumphs of Jesus (see John 12:19)-to such a pitch had these chief priests come of diabolical determination to shut out the light from themselves, and quench it from the earth!” (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary).

How incredible the power is sin is. The chief priests, endowed with the sacred cause of ministering in the holy Temple and interceding for the people, instead plotted murder of Lazarus, the living miracle! (As an aside, I wonder how Lazarus felt being a tourist attraction…if it pointed to Christ, which it did, I bet he felt pretty good about it!)

Sin is so dark and strangling, the Priests’ hearts were dwindled down to a shriveled pea but as dense heavy as a black hole. Yet so was my heart, before I was saved! Our Lord is so loving and precious, He first loved us. (Romans 5:8).

I guess just be warned by the fact that sin will make you as heartless as the priests and Pharisees, who wanted to quench the Light and douse the triumphs. And be encouraged that no matter what your sin, if you repent, and seek Him He will forgive you.

photo credit: Lel4nd via photopin cc

Posted in sin, society

Naked man strangles dog, Patriotic fortresses being built in Idaho

Posted on by elizabethprata

When you play with fire, you get consumed.

Sin is fire, yet too many people do not understand its deadly effects. The effects of sin in a person devolve that person’s heart, body, and mind, until they are only a vestige of humanity. We are made in God’s image, the flesh is a mere shell surrounding what is real. Sin is a disease, a consuming fire of the flesh. It is a slippery path upon which their foot shall slide in due time (Deuteronomy 32:35). Some have their foot slide earlier than others. Some will traverse the path for a longer while before slipping suddenly. Either way, their foot SHALL slide.

I’d written yesterday about the effect on a society of people who choose the homosexual lifestyle. However the choice to sin will result in all manner of insanity, not just homosexuality. Auguste Tholuck wrote about the ancient Roman and Greek days from a Christian perspective of what sin will produce in a society. His book “Nature and moral Influence of Heathenism” is well known. He wrote, “Heathenism profanes the image of God in man.”

In other words, when one is not in Jesus with the Holy Spirit restraining sin, the image of God in man becomes so unidentifiable as anything Godly that man is eventually consumed, swallowed up. Jonathan Edwards write in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,”

“the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up;”

We know all this, you say. But what does a society look like which has passed the tipping point of sin’s burdens and effects? When, collectively, the people disregard God and go their own way?

In 2009, John MacArthur wrote an essay called “The Character Crisis.” He stated,

“[Romans 1:28-32] describes our culture to the letter, doesn’t it? People today literally entertain themselves with iniquity, heedlessly applauding those who sin most flagrantly. Society today makes celebrities of people who in our grandparents’ generation would have been deemed the most contemptible rogues. Almost everything that used to be considered shameful is now celebrated. We therefore live in a culture where personal character and individual virtue are rapidly evaporating at almost every level. Virtue and infamy have traded places.”

Mass sin makes a society crazy. Like this:

Naked man shot by homeowner after breaking into a Miami home and trying to strangle pet Rottweiler
“A naked intruder was shot in Miami this morning after being found trying to choke a home-owner’s pet Rottweiler.  The property owner shot the man in the leg after discovering him trying to throttle one of his dogs at around 5am, NBCMiami.com reports.  The suspect is being treated in the Jackson Memorial hospital following the incident in the Northwest 2nd Avenue area of the city. … The naked suspect tried to bite the homeowner, police and later hospital workers coming to his assistance.”

Between crazy people everywhere and the government’s unconstitutional interference with us on a grand level, we get this:

Patriotic Group To Build Armed ‘Defensible’ Neighborhood Fortress
“A group of like-minded patriots, bound together by pride in American exceptionalism, plan on building an armed community to protect their liberty. The group, named Citadel, intends to purchase 2,000 to 3,000 acres for the project in western Idaho.  The community will comprise of 3,500 to 7,000 families of patriotic Americans who “voluntarily choose to live together in accordance with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of Rightful Liberty.”

You can bet that there are others who have thought of building an enclave, or are even making preparations for such communities. If one group is being reported in the media it means there are likely hundreds of others which are out there but haven’t come to national attention.

Absent a unifying thread of Godly worship, eventually every society splinters into living according to what they believe is right.

“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6).

Clarke’s Commentary says, “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes – He was his own governor, and what he did he said was right; and, by his cunning and strength, defended his conduct. When a man’s own will, passions, and caprice, are to be made the rule of law, society is in a most perilous and ruinous state.”

The disintegration of the believing Church, which in this case acts as the undershepherd standing in for the judge mentioned in the verse, means there is no ‘magistrate’ to take note of man’s sin, and call him to restrain from it, or punish him for it according to the law of God.

This now means more than ever that every believer is called to do what is right in the face of increasing wrong. We have an opportunity here. A flashlight can be seen in the daylight but is even better seen when it is dark. Each Christian should be pursuing what is excellent, doing what is good, and submitting to the Holy Spirit by walking on the narrow path. Scripture alone tells us what to do. I don’t like that the times have gotten so dark. But I do like that I have an opportunity to appeal to Jesus to make His light in me shine brighter, to be seen in the darkness by those with no hope.

MacArthur closes with this:

“Truly excellent character is actually a reflection of the moral nature of God Himself. [the image of God] For that reason, all virtues are interdependent and closely related. And all of them are the fruit of God’s grace. As you study biblical virtue, may you perceive the true beauty of Christ’s character and desire to see it reproduced in your own life.”

Keep praying for Jesus to come, meanwhile, keep praying for the people of the world so affected by sin.

Posted in azurdia, laodicea, sin

Laodicean church- hot, lukewarm, cold

Posted on by elizabethprata

I am listening to Todd Friel’s lecture 56 of Drive By Discernment. The theme is, “How people and movements can drift away from the truth”.

Art Azurdia was the speaker in this particular lecture and he talked of Dr. Paul Hiebert.

Dr. Paul Hiebert was a Doctor of Missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and missionary for 6 years under the Mennonite Brethren Board of Missions. Azurdia explained,

“Hiebert said that the first generation of Mennonites were a people preoccupied with the Gospel and concerned with some social responsibility. The second generation of Mennonites assumed the Gospel, and became increasingly absorbed with social responsibility. The third generation of Mennonites abandoned the Gospel and was consequently altogether was completely preoccupied with social responsibility. Preoccupied. Assumed. Abandoned.”

That pattern reminded me of the verse in Revelation 3:15-16,

“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

Hot. Lukewarm. Cold.
(Preoccupied. Assumed. Abandoned.)

I wonder where you believe we are in that pattern? Azurdia’s answer was, “Any fair assessment of the evangelical community at least in the United States would have to say, using by description Hiebert’s Mennonite-isms, we are at that second stage of assuming the Gospel, and only one generation away from abandoning it.”

He went on in the lecture to describe the many churches he has guest preached in have had a long absence of preaching about sin. If there is no talk of sin, the Gospel is not presented, Azurdia said.

Just because a sermon or conference or gathering mentions Jesus, does not mean that the Gospel is presented. Azurdia asked, “How does it happen that the Gospel of Jesus Christ gets lost inside of a ministry that at least by confession proclaims its intention to promote the glory of God and the conversion of the nations?”

Jesus asked, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”” (Luke 18:8b)

Come soon, Lord Jesus!