Sin

Last week as I was in the hospital room, sitting at Awadhi‘s bed, I had a thought that was resounding in my head. You hear so many statistics about the ways disease and death ravage third world countries, specifically sub-Saharan Africa. As I was there in that room at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, those numbers grew faces again as I realize that there are children in this ward that aren’t going to come out. I heard the cries of a family mourning just outside of Awadhi’s room in the hallway; a woman crying out loud over some child’s death, possibly hers. And this thought was resounding in my head: “Why don’t we realize the impact of our sin?”

This world has a major problem. This world is in sin. The impact of that results in all the woes that you can think of in this world. You name the ailment and its source is in sin; disease, dissatisfaction, shame, poverty, loneliness, death. When Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, which is the definition of sin, the consequences were severe and every aspect of their lives were changed as shame, poverty and death entered the world.

This however cannot be simply about our earliest ancestors however many thousands of years ago. This has to be about us and the decisions that we make day to day. We pay the consequences of our sin, we also pay the consequences of other people’s sins. We have this bad problem with spreading the cause of all our misery.

I want to speak specifically to my fellow followers of Christ. We’ve got to knock this stuff off. The Lord put us here to be witnesses of another reality, another Kingdom, and we are called to heal and reconcile a broken world. Every time that we choose to sin, we are in fact engaging in favor of the kingdom of this world; the kingdom that fights against the Kingdom of God. We can’t continue making excuses and speaking sin over our lives. “Well, I’ll probably just sin again, but I’ll try to do better.” That’s garbage. You have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you right? Walk in victory. Get the help and the environment that you need and conquer the sin.

No more bad references to the Bible about sin either. We are supposed to put the old man to death (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9). No more “Oh well, I’m the chief of sinners.” Look at that verse again. 1 Timothy 1:15-16 (NKJV): “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.” Other translations swap out “pattern” for “example.” Paul in his humility called himself the chief of sinners in light of who he was (a terrorist against Christians) at the time of his salvation. His life was then to be an example and show a pattern to other people that they too should believe on Jesus to receive everlasting life. Our lives are supposed to be as such.

I was reminded of this again as I was watching an episode of Travel the Road online this week. The two missionaries were in Darfur, Sudan and talked about how there have been over 400,000 genocide related murders since April 2003. Is there no end to our depravity? There are all these refugee camps that lack the most basic needs and yet are trapped, because if they leave, the women will get raped by the Arab Janjaweed soldiers and the men will get killed. Its terrible the things that we do to each other. There is no end to the darkness of a soul devoid of Christ.

I don’t say this to make it about those terrible atrocities in whatever country Americans have never heard of. This goes on every single day in so many different ways. Over 3,000 people die a day because of malaria. Disease is a result of sin and the death that potentially ensues is often avoidable if we counteract the sin and disease with love. Awadhi had malaria last week, so did Glory, so did Witness. It happens. It sucks, but if its treated it won’t kill someone. And yet people in developing countries die because of lack of treatment. Besides the fact that in the states we actually ended malaria, just thinking that we could do the same thing for others and yet don’t is astounding.

I don’t put statistics or things like that on the government of the United States. I put that on the church that I’m most familiar with, the American church. Governments are too arbitrary in their actions in my opinion and the reason that I’m not particularly patriotic is because many things of the government are contrary to biblical principles and the values of God. I say they do things arbitrarily because they do good things like foreign aid, education and building infrastructure, but also do bad things like start wars, sanction the deaths of people (unborn or alive) and allow sin to take place within their sanctions. So this is really on the church. Our “constitution” (the Bible) says that we stand for justice, that we stand against sin, that if someone is hungry we give them something to eat, that we proclaim the good news of Christ in word and deed. When people are dying in their sin, because we are too busy with our own sin (often of simple omission), that’s a problem with the church.

The Lord has a response to sin. We hate it and we love it. We love it on others, we hate it on ourselves. We cry to him when others don’t get it and call Him mean and unfair when we receive it. His response to sin is wrath, ridding the evil out. God is too holy to allow sin in His presence. The reason that the Israelites had to put an end to all those other people groups in Canaan wasn’t because God is mean. In the Abrahamic covenant it was clear that He chose Abraham and his seed of Israel to bless all the nations (Genesis 12:1-3). It was because those people were sinful (can you say “child sacrifice?”) and that behavior isn’t allowed in His presence. However, Israel didn’t rid the sin from within their God-sanctioned borders and because of that sin, they too suffered. If only we would do as God does and be so fervent in ridding sin and evil out of our own lives.

This whole topic has another application for me this week. Sin leads to pain and pain hurts.

As you may know I’m in the middle of a three week fast. Its going well and I do indeed see God moving. There are a couple things on my mind, but the foremost is my relationship with Melissa. I’ve been praying for breakthrough and He indeed has begun to bring that in our relationship. I can’t quite put words to the feeling, but on Sunday as I was in my office on my day off, the Holy Spirit stirred something up in me to email Melissa. I email her or skype with her daily, but this was something specific that I needed to write and it was fairly unprovoked aside from the Spirit’s prompting. It however is so incredibly necessary in light of all that we’re undertaking over the next eight months as we prepare for the wedding.

I went about the normal catch-up about my day’s activities as well as responding to what she wrote me previously. Then the Holy Spirit led me to opening a conversation about our past sins and struggles. I emailed her and told her that I would hold nothing back from her as she is the woman that will know me entirely. I’ve done some really stupid stuff in the past. That softens it too much. I have engaged in truly evil ways, I have sinned. Many sins, certainly of the sexual type, were indeed against the Lord, myself and, though I didn’t know her at the time, Melissa. I put that out there and she quickly responded that it was also on her heart and she told me that she wanted to know everything. I have gone on to tell her over the last five days about everything. All the ways that I’ve sinned against her and the evil that I’ve done in the past have been laid out there. Its been hard and its been embarrassing. But its been good. Confession is such a powerful tool to fight against sin and the effects that it has on our lives. A little light in a dark room goes a long way. I truly feel like Melissa and I have turned a corner in our relationship and I thank God for this fast and for what He’s doing as we combat sin and potential sin together by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Let this be a call to arms to all my fellow disciples. Let’s rid this out of our lives as it has no place in the Kingdom of God. If you have a sin, of commission or omission, put that off and pick up what the Lord is giving you. The Lord gives us power and authority from His Holy Spirit to overcome sin with truth and love, for this we give praise.

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The Rundown: Well two weeks in the books and I’m now in my final week of fasting. Its been good. The Lord is moving, as mentioned above. While I’m looking forward to Thursday night, I’m still trying to remain focused and realize that there’s a reason this is a three week fast and not a two week fast. He still has more for me in this and I look forward to hearing whatever that is. I certainly have come into the fast with the things that I’m praying for and I think that is fine. But I’ve also been praying and opening myself up to the Lord and whatever He wants to do on this fast, aside from my own thoughts. There are many things coming up for me and I just want to be prepared to walk in victory in all of them. Also realizing that this is an important form of worship and sacrifice to Him is important. I don’t know what I was expecting as far as how I’m feeling physiologically. The juice helps and with how busy I am, it wouldn’t be wise to do it any other way for this period of time. I’m certainly hungry and I’ve literally had dreams about eating food, but it all comes with the territory. The conversations that have been taking place with Melissa are more important than the food I would have eaten over the last week and that’s only what has manifested in the physical. I know that this fast is doing things in the spiritual that are also more important. Other than that, everything is fine. It was a normal week at TOA, nothing too crazy I suppose. I’ve had the kids doing research on different countries on the computers and that’s been really great. We are going to hear the reports on Saturday and I’m just excited, because I feel like the internet is such a necessary tool for them to master in this day and age. Awadhi is doing well. He stayed home this week because his retest came back positive for malaria still, but today he tested positive so he’ll probably return to school on Monday. All the other kids are good. That’s it. Prayers, comments, emails and the like are encouraged! Be blessed!