Coming up short

 

January 31, 2020



Have you ever made a mistake? Dumb question, right? Of course you have and of course I have. As a matter of fact, there are times in my life when it seems as if I make more mistakes in a given day than not.

Case in point: As most of you know (as evidenced by you currently reading this article) I, along with my other fellow pastors, occasionally write devotions for this paper. I’ve been doing it for a while now and it’s something that I consistently look forward to doing. Well, I was supposed to write the devotion for January 1st of this year. I even remember being excited to write the first devotion for 2020! Well, in case you didn’t notice, January 1st came and went and I did not have a devotion written for the paper. It wasn’t that the holidays were too busy (even thought they were), it wasn’t writer’s block, and it wasn’t that God refused to speak to me. I just plain forgot.

You see, despite my best intentions I still messed up and came up short. Now, I could have let my embarrassment overwhelm me and refuse to ever write another devotion, but that would not help me or anyone else. What I have to learn (and you as well) is that we do not have to be, nor should we be, defined by our mistakes when there’s an offer of forgiveness. Such is the case with our spiritual lives.

Our mistakes, or “sins,” which is a more appropriate word for our purposes here, have a tendency to consume our thoughts when we realize that we are guilty of them. This is especially true if you’re a Christian as our sins are magnified in our minds because we are aware of them, ashamed of them, and we realize how damaging they can be to our relationship with God and to our witness. Should Christians sin? No. Do Christians sin? Yes, sometimes we do. Is it alright that we do? No, it is rebellion against our Almighty Father. That being said, if you are a Christian and you do sin, does that sin define you? No, no, and no.

Revelation 12 describes Satan as the accuser of the brethren. He loves to point out your faults, your mistakes, your sins and your shortcomings. If you are a child of God, Satan has lost the battle for your soul and the best he can do to war against you is tempt you to sin and then rub your face in it when you do. He reminds us day and night of our mistakes. He constantly throws back in our faces how worthless we are, how unspiritual we are, and how tired of us God must be.

Lies. All lies.

Sin is damaging and yes, it hurts us, others, and our closeness to God. However, what we need to remember as Christians is that Jesus died for us knowing that we will still fail from time to time. He is always there to offer forgiveness and redemption, but we have to be willing to repent, shake it off, and get back in step with our Savior. The longer we wallow in pity and our woe-is-me attitudes, the more ineffective we are for Christ.

1 John 1:9 tells us that if we confess our sins to God, He is faithful to forgive us. Sin should grieve us. It should break our hearts when we rebel against our Heavenly Father, but it should also cause us to run towards God instead of shrinking away from Him. If you are a Christian, your sin does not define you. The blood of Jesus does.

The longer you are a Christian, the easier it should become to say “no” to temptation and “yes” to Jesus, but there’s a good chance you’ll never become a perfect saint in this life. Regardless, God will not give up on you if you do not give up on Him. Repent (which means you turn from sin) and follow the Lord with everything you’ve got. Now, maybe next time I get the chance to write the New Year’s Day devotion I will get it done instead of spending New Year’s Eve watching Dolph Lundgren play He-Man in the Masters of the Universe movie.

Or maybe I’ll do both.

 

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