Tuesday 1 Jul 2014

July 1: 1 John 3:4-9

Key Verse: 1 John 3:7
Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.

Devotion:
It is a difficult line to draw between living a life of sin and a life with sin. The division between righteousness and sin, on the other hand, is quite stark because of the difference between sin and no sin. God wants us to live a life that is more in line with the life that Christ showed us whilst he lived on earth. Christ came to live without sin and lived His life to bring glory to our sinless God. He came to give His life for our sakes so that we could be freed from our sin.

Sin is a trap. When we commit sin we try to cover it up and invariably we try to cover it up with a little more sin. Pretty soon we have the biggest trash pile in our lives that we could ever imagine and wonder how we could have ever let that into our lives. The answer is one little sin at a time. A single piece of litter on a field will stand out like a sore thumb, but does not necessarily look that bad in the grand scheme of things. But fill up the field with trash and we are appalled at the mess!

God does not want us to become immune to the mess by allowing it into our lives all the time. He would rather we see that first sin and stop it in its tracks than continue to give in and allow more sin through our lives. It is much harder to get rid of a field full on trash than a single piece on the field. In the same manner it is much harder for us to clean up our lives when we have allowed them to go too far. Stopping sin early is the only right way!

When we accept Christ into our lives we employ our very own trash collector. That sounds so bad doesn’t it! But that is what sin is like in our lives, utter trash! We should not be allowing it in and we should not be making Christ work even harder to forgive us of all the trash we invite in on a daily basis. Leave sin behind and move on with Christ for a much better life!

Points to Ponder:
Do you pick up your own litter?

Do you ask Christ to forgive your own sins?