Friday Reading: 1 Peter 4 1-6
Key Verse: 1 Peter 4 3
3 For the time of life which is past is enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, having gone on in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, parties, carousings, and abominable idolatries.
3 For the time of life which is past is enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, having gone on in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, parties, carousings, and abominable idolatries.
Devotion:
There is absolutely no point trying to ever justify sin, because all sin works against God and against Christ and what He has done for us. If you want to try and justify it, then you need to relate that to how much suffering it caused Christ. He died for our sin. That may sound a bit extreme when we first hear it, but the plain truth is that the penalty for sin is death and that is exactly what Christ had to pay to cover our sin debt.
There is absolutely no point trying to ever justify sin, because all sin works against God and against Christ and what He has done for us. If you want to try and justify it, then you need to relate that to how much suffering it caused Christ. He died for our sin. That may sound a bit extreme when we first hear it, but the plain truth is that the penalty for sin is death and that is exactly what Christ had to pay to cover our sin debt.
A true Christian will make the will of God their aim and not their own will, feelings, wants, desires or lack in will power. We are not hear to rule our own lives or others, but to submit to the will of God. He wants us to willingly submit and not to have to be like robots doing exactly what we have been told. When we are saved, Christ changes our heart so that we can see His will more clearly and be able to do His will when asked to. He gives us the ability to be able to turn away from sin and towards Him. That change is a marked change from before we submitted to His authority – it alters our ways of thinking and gives us the ability to see what we do for others or against them.
It is little wonder that we see many people who are not believers in God having all manner of lascivious tendencies in their lives. Indeed many of us may well think back on the days when we may well have been in that category; the lusts of the flesh cover more than just sexual activity. People who still live like that consider us the old ones out because we dare to be different, we dare to stand up against their immoral lifestyles. Some will even say that we are prejudice because we think they are wrong... It is not us that judge them, but Christ, the one who paid for their sins that judges them...
Points to Ponder:
Do you do some pretty wild things?
How much do you hurt Christ with the things you continue to do?
Do you do some pretty wild things?
How much do you hurt Christ with the things you continue to do?