Monday 3 December 2007

Monday Reading: Proverbs 27:12
 
Key Verse: Proverbs 27:12
12  A sensible one foresees the evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.
 
Devotion:
There is still a large gap between God and sin. We may have that gap bridged for us by the death of Christ so that we may have a way of getting to heaven, but sin is still far away from God. We may look at it another way. Sin is in our nature, but sin is against the very nature of God. The sin we are talking about is the internal, indwelling rottenness of our societies. The very stuff that keeps people away from knowing God. The sin that is built into each one of us and the sin that Satan takes hold of and steers us away from God with.
 
God has given us the ability to see what sin is. He has given us the ability to tell the difference between doing good and doing evil. Yet we still choose evil over good so many times in our lives, just because we think we can take hold of it and control it. What we don't see is the rottenness that sets in as soon as we choose that way of doing things. As soon as we allow a little sin into our lives, we allow the rottenness to start working. If you had a whole sack of apples, would you store a rotten one in the middle of all the good ones? Hardly, because it would spread the mould and germs to all the others before too long. We need to make that separation between good and bad and we need to keep them apart.
 
God cannot abide sin, that is why sin will never get close to Him. We, on the other hand, dabble with it for all of our lives. Choosing the sin path is easy because everyone else around us is doing exactly that. Choosing the good path means going against people, even our friends. We know what we are going into, but we pretend to ourselves that everything is going to be ok. We place the rotten apple straight into our sack and expect it not to affect the rest! When we choose the wrong way, we don't advertise it because we know it's wrong – we would rather do it in the dark away from others, just in case... so why do we do it? Because we don't depend on Christ!
 
Points to Ponder:
What is your worst bad habit?
 
How often have you tried to ask for help with it? How often have you accepted help...