You Only Live Life Once

It’s an easy thing to forget, isn’t it? At least I find it so. I plug along in my job, in my ministry, in my relationships and suddenly I get to thinking that one little sin here, one little compromise there, they don’t really matter. They don’t affect my ability to function – my care and concern for those in my ministry, my ability to control my tongue, they don’t impact my ability to succeed on the job. So they must not matter, right?

And surely it’s impossible to think that you can really keep track of every sin in your life, confess it all, deal with it all to the same degree, consistently. I agree. But beware. Those little sins add up.

And one day you wake up and realize that you are full of pride, self-deceit, and self-sufficiency, and you aren’t sure how you got there.

I’ll tell you how. You justified. Suddenly you became the judge in your life over what was okay and what was not. You removed the Spirit from His rightful place to convict you, to lead you, and guide you. You, as it were, took back the reins of control in your life.

Solomon, at the end of the day, made this conclusion: “Fear God and obey His commands”. That is all that matters, said the wisest man, beside Jesus, to walk the face of this earth.

Easy to hear, maybe even to put your intellectual faith in. But can you walk it? Can you live it? Not so simple to accomplish.

Fear God and obey His commands.

Well maybe there’s other sufficient motive God put in place to drive us to this: have you ever noticed that no matter how often you’ve confessed a sin, you still have to deal with the consequences of it? (Oh, and point to be taken: answer the question “how often”). If you commit the sin of gluttony, you may be able to confess that sin and by God’s grace through Christ, be forgiven it, but now you’ve got a few pounds of fat to shred if you want to maintain a healthy body. Or take a more serious example: (and really, it’s only more serious because it has more serious of consequences; in God’s eyes, all sin is sufficient grounds for death); if you commit the sin of gluttony by getting drunk, there’s a wide gamut of possible consequences, starting with injuring someone emotionally through a rash word spoken, to injuring someone physically in a car accident, all the way to physical abuse in the home. And the next day you might be apologetic, but the consequences of your sin remain. Saying sorry, contrary to popular opinion, is not enough. You still have to clean up the mess afterwards.

I think we might, in Christian circles, have forgotten this. We gloss over our sin and call them “mistakes”. We “forgive and forget” one another but never acknowledge that what they did really was a wrong against us, and really did hurt us deep down.

Paul speaks in 2 Cor. 7:10 of “Godly sorrow”. Do you have it? Have you ever had it? If not, maybe you should consider allowing yourself to grieve over your sin a little more. It’s not fun. It’s not pleasurable. It’s not even a delightful process. It hurts. But in the end, as Paul states, is the salvation for your souls. Not just eternal salvation, but restored strength and motive and drive to remain faithful to Christ.

Take sin more seriously.

Fear God and obey His commands.

He said it. We ignore it more often than we do it.

Maybe we should learn to listen a little bit better.

Written by believer in reflection over recent sins in their life.