"Do I really have to get rid of my sin??"

This blog concludes my remarks about secret sins.
The very reason we have so much unbelief today is because we have so many people who love their sins and desire to stay in them. Many people have no god or they will fashion a belief about God so that it comforts them or allows them to live their life without the conviction of sin. Many people will have no god because God interferes with their lusts. They would not be able to go on with their evil pleasures if they allowed themselves to believe in a god over and above them. It is for this reason that people hate God and hate His servants - because the truth is too hot to handle.
If you would send along a preacher who would not tell them of their sins they would hear him gladly; but when the truth of the gospel comes with power then men can't bear it (or they sure don't want to hear it!) When the gospel message tramps upon a rascals' vice, sin or iniquity, it is then that they become obstinate, and refuse to believe.
We could probably triple our church attendance and have people standing in the overflow section of the sanctuary and have tons of folks believing the gospel even more, if they were allowed to live in their sins as well. Think about it! How many drunken reprobates would be a "christian" if they could live peaceably with their sin.  How many thieves, how many philanderers, liars, schemers or arsonists would come to church if they could believe and yet retain their sins.
There is just one huge problem. Faith and sin can never stand side by side; or righteous together with unrighteousness. The gospel would cry, "down with it," "down with it," and the man of guilt would say "not so, down with the gospel."  For the sinner, it is too hot to handle so it's easier to turn aside from it.
No one in his right mind wouldn't say there is a "pleasure" to sin. Hebrews 11:25 says that Moses chose to suffer affliction with the children of Israel, rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. You got that last word, right? "Season", like summer, winter, etc. Seasons don't stay forever, they soon turn into something else. Just like the "pleasure of sin" for a season.  Before long the pleasure turns into pain, hurt, then destruction, ugliness, anhilation, etc.
The scripture reads this way, "Except you be converted and become as little children, you can in nowise enter into the kingdom of heaven." The sinner says, "I will not be converted then; I am not going to be a child, I am a man, and a man I will be. I would rather be a lost man than a saved child.  What? Am I to surrender my judgement, and sit down tacitly to believe in God's Word?"
And so in his arrogance and pride, he says, "I will not".  Like Satan, he declares it would be better to go to hell and "be with his friends" than to serve in heaven. Thus he goes away an unbeliever, because it is just too humbling a thing to give in to God; too humbling to say, "I surrender myself".
 Our church has started, "In Just 40 Days",  a time of humbling, seeking and allowing God to work deeper things in our lives.  How about if in the next 40 days church, we pray some of these rascals in.

Hidden source of visible Damage - Pt 3

  There is a misery that goes with secret sin.  It is a master with unequaled cruelty and never-lessening demands.  Its name is "misery".
Think about it reader, the sinner who makes a profession of religion, and yet lives in iniquity, is the most miserable. A person who is a drunkard in the world is not ashamed of his sin. He doesn't even call it a sin. He will be forever miserable when he is called before God, but here in this world, he feels that he has his "happy hour". 
A foul-mouthed rebel who cusses and swears up a storm, says, "thats the way I am". He's not ashamed of it and doesn't even try to hide what he is. He's not really miserable he is just downright ignorant, crude and base.
But the professing Christian, the one who God has called out from his darkness, the man who claims to walk with God, who is united to a church, who hangs out with God's people and fellowships with them, but then lives in sin, what a miserable existence he must have! 
It reminds me of the voles in our garden. They stay hid most of the time, eating up our fruits and veggies, but every once in a while they have to come out from their cover, only to quickly run back into hidding. Men (or women) who have hidden sin are like that as well. They run out now and then, hard pressed by their desire; but then, concern and great fear of being discovered, pulls them back. It is a miserable situation for them.  They are never sure they have not been seen. One day driven like the slave they have become, they wonder out with cunning and secrecy and manage to conceal and hide their problem; but the next day something else comes, and they live in constant fear, telling lie after lie, to make the last lie appear truthful, adding deception to deception, in order that they may not be discovered.
It is a terrible thing for the church when we have men who accompish things in the "Big house". You want to celebrate their work with a great big, 'that a boy', then you recognize (or find out about) their secret works and recoil with pain. It adds great hurt and causes great stress for the sheep and the church when we have to live life constantly on guard for the person who requires two faces in order to get by.
If you get to a point in your life where you are serving God with less than "all your heart",  then don't pretend to serve him with all your heart. 'No man can serve two masters". Don't do it. Don't even try to do it, because life will be forever miserable.
Above all, beware of commitments, actions, conversations, places, people or things that you do that you will find it necessary to conceal.
There is a great poem written by Thomas Hood called 'The Dream of Eugene Aram,' you gotta read this poem it is an amazing work on the topic we have been discussing.

Hidden Source of Visible Damage Pt 2

Before I continue, I have to admit that I know nothing of identifing a pretender.  In all my years of ministry, I can recognize damage and hurt a whole lot better than I can identify a pretender.  My experience is that by the time you learn someone is "living life out in the open in a Christian way", yet they are involved in "secret sins while the doors are closed", usually you've already been stung.

Pretenders are generally pretty normal people who conduct outwardly upright lives. I have found them to be congenial, generous, easy to have trust in and socially well-adjusted.  But they indulge in some sin which the eye of man has not yet detected. It would definetely change our opinion, our acceptance, our confidence and trust in them (the Penn State Jerry Sandusky type comes to mind). On the outside you think they have their 'A' game on but behind closed doors they're dealing with some lust or vice that has totally seduced them. 

So, pretender, whatever it is, I want to say this to you. You are a fool for this one reason: your sin is not a secret, it is known, and it will one day be revealed; maybe very soon. But be aware that it probably won't be revealed till Satan is sure that it will cause the most irreparable damage possible to you and anyone around you, especially those you love.

Please know that your sin is not a secret for three very powerful reasons: 1) because Satan and his cohorts know and see it, they are the ones who have seduced you and drawn you deeper into a pleasureable dellusion; 2) you know it and feel its power over you 3) The eye of God, whose face you are sinning before, has seen it.

There is no secret chamber where you can hide. There is no dark cellar where you can conceal the damage done to your body,soul and spirit. If you were to dig a hole as deep as hell, there is not enough earth on this globe to cover your sin. If you were to lay it on the gound and cover it with a mountain, those mountains would tell the tale of what is buried underneath it. Cast that sin into the sea and a thousand babbling waves would tell the secret out. There is no hiding it from God.

This world that we live in is like the glass beehive we see when we go to Trax Farms; the bees and all they are doing is visible and revealed to those watching.  You can look right in and see the bees doing their wonderful honey making process the same way our lives are transparent to God who sees our good and our evils.

It is a for-certain-fact that our eyes are weak. We cannot, as human beings, see into the darkness. We cannot see things that are unknown to us, but God's eyes can penetrate the blackness and read the thoughts of man. He sees those acts when we think ourself most concealed.

You may be saying within yourself, "Nobody knows". Well I am here to tell you that God's eyes are now looking through those concealing clouds and is even now starring right at you. Neither our visible acts or our secret innermost thoughts hidden from God. He knows them as well.

Pretender, get that hidden sin removed.  The blood of Jesus Christ was shed to set you free from all sins, overt and covert.

Part 3 of 5 next week..."The Misery of Secret Sin"

Hidden Source of Visible Damage, pt 1

I have been around to see some pretty terrible and tragic events in life.  Earthquakes come to my mind immediately; they can cause damage that I don't ever want to witness first-hand.  Hurricanes push water with so much ease that you can find the evidence of it miles away from the coasts.  Another thing that causes heart breaking damage, but not associated with nature, is when man made objects go bad. The airplane that goes down, the train that jumps the track, an electric box that shorts out and causes a home or business fire. These things cause horrible damage and people suffer tremendously from them.

But, I want to talk about a worse thing, human in its construction, that inflicts great damage. It leaves in its wake horrible visible damage and victims stunned and paralyzed by its occurarance. I am talking about people who have sins so known to themselves, but yet secret to others around them.  Every once in a while we turn over a fair stone in the 'church's' lawn. It's surrounded by beautiful landscaping and lovely mulch, but underneath it, to our dismay, we find all kinds of filthy insects and loathsome critters. Then in disgust of their hypocrisy, we tend to think that 'all men are liars, that 'there isn't anybody that we can trust." It is not fair to say this of everyone; but really, the discoveries which are made of the insincerity of some of our fellow man is enough to make us despise the whole darn race.

It is to any of you who sin secretly and yet make a profession of faith that I am writing. You know, those who break God's covenants in the dark and wear a mask of godliness in the light......to you folks, who shut the doors and commit wickedness in secret, I write the next couple of blogs. Before we go on I pray that God would speak to you and help you pray this prayer, "Cleanse thou me from secret faults." 

I would now ask of all pretenders to renounce, to detest, to hate, to abhor all your secret faults.
Next week in my blog I will talk to all of you about "The Folly of Secret Sins."

Tebow Time

Now Tebow talk has swept the nation.

•His against-all-odds heroics brought CBS a mind-blowing 25.9 overnight rating, the best for a wild card football game in almost 25 years.

By Barry Gutierrez, AP

U.S. Marines 'Tebow' before the start of the New York Jets and Denver Broncos' game on Nov. 17.

•Sports websites staggered under an onslaught of hits. NFL.com reported views of videos in the hour after the game up 385% over Wild Card Sunday last year.

•Tebow hit more than 1 million mentions on Twitter. Sunday night, the rate of tweets announcing the victory hit 9,420 per second. The all-time record was set last month when a TV screening of Japanese movie drew 25,088 tweets-per-second. But Tebow still beats the 8,868 tweets-per-second rate reached when Beyoncé announced her pregnancy during the 2011 MTV Music Awards.

•Both Tebow and his favorite Bible verse, John 3:16 (proclaiming Jesus' promise of salvation), were in the top three Google Trends throughout most of Monday. Many people noted he threw for exactly 316 yards, an unintentional allusion to the Bible verse he etched into his eye black while winning national championships at the University of Florida.

•NFL sales of Tebow's No. 15 Broncos jersey are second only to those for Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers, who won the Super Bowl last year.

But the Tebow wave was rolling well before Sunday says Cathy Grossman of USA Today.  (I also want to thank contributing writters, Robert Klemko and Michael McCarthy for the above information.)

I'd like to also add to the above Tebow excitement. Since John 3:16 is Tebow's favorite Bible passage, note that his two bosses are both named John. John Fox is his coach and John Elway the Bronco's GM.
To add a little more fun sizzle to the Tebow mix, Tim's pass to Darious Thomas was interesting by Tebow's explanation.  When Tim saw Thomas cut in front of the NFL's best shut down cornerback in the league, Ike Taylor, who literally shuts down the NFL's best pass receivers every game; Tebow saw there was no one else to stop him once he caught the ball, and at the second he threw the ball, his thought was 'thank you Lord,' and he began the race to the end zone to celebrate. 
Oh yeah, that play was also the longest overtime playoff touchdown pass ever and it was also the shortest playoff overtime game for the NFL.  One more thought, every team is to get at least one possession in a playoff game.  There are only two ways the game can end without both teams getting a chance with the ball. 1) If the team who wins the coin toss is the first team to get the ball and scores a touchdown.  But first you have to win the coin toss (the Steelers lost the toss). (Does anyone remember the Jerome Bettis call on the coin toss disaster a few years back). So the Bronco's and Tebow get the ball first and on that very first play, now known as 'the play' Tim Tebow gets the yardage necessary to finish the game with 316 yards, and I think that is so kool.
 Kinda makes you realize that 'God is everywhere. Are your eyes open to it'?  Is it a conincidence? Maybe. But maybe our Lord is using America's "new religion" (as they call it) to preach His same life changing message of salvation, only with His new pigskin passing pastor, in the new cathedrals, with a whole new congregation all dressed up in their brand spanking new Sunday-best-numbered going to the meeting clothes. Preaching to the masses in a totally new way.  92.5 million people now know John 3:16. Fascinating....All kind of fun stuff when you think about it.

Living among the Dead

Luke 24:5
5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? (KJV)

Isn't that a meaningful question?  "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

There are so many people upset about stores (or politicians) not saying, "Merry Christmas", or for some of them not having a manger scene.  The other day I heard on the evening news that a community in Nebraska wasn't "allowed" to put up a Manger scene this year, but the mayor told the courts they would put it up anyway because they had maintained a manger scene for 225 yrs and they wouldn't stop this year no matter what the courts said.
 It's so sad that the world takes umbrage to the baby Jesus or to the cross of Christ - but, after all, this is an end time period for the church. (Unlike other "gods", they're afraid of Christ because there IS power in that Name!)
The above question takes on such meaning, "Why seek ye the living among the dead.' We who are saved and living in the knowledge and favor of God value the manger and the cross. Why? Because our spirits have been converted...and now, we are the living! We have had a Romans 12:2 experience. We are not conformed to this world, but have been transformed. In that transformation our thoughts and hearts have been regenerated to greater and better graces than our common neighbors.
We are the living, standing among the dead.  The life and light of Christ dwells in us.  Yet, we live in a world that is dead and filled with darkness. When we expect the world to hold dearly to Christmas or to Easter or to a Holy time along with us, we are really seeking the 'living among the dead'.  It just isn't there! And it won't be until the "light of the world"....Jesus....illuminates them and the dead become living! That's our job - to tell them about "The Way, The Truth, and The LIFE"..the Child born in a manger, crucified on a cross and risen from the grave!  Merry CHRISTmas.

One Title

It is a sacred time of year.  So powerful is Christmas that the world is drawn into the sense of the season. Of course the world acts differently than the church does because they are not celebrating the season for its' deeper spiritual meaning, but still, they do celebrate it and are pulled into its sense of awe. I believe there is a spiritual synergy around Christmas time that even wicked devils can't stop. It's as though there were two entirely different meanings (and that might be true to all of us this side of heaven) but to God there is only one meaning.
  There is only one virgin birth for the redemption of mankind.  There is only one time the Magi will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and present their personal gifts.  There was only one star over Bethlehem and only one star leading those Wise men who followed it.  Only one time did the shepherds leave their flocks and have the angels babysit their sheep. It will never happen again that the angels would sing over the manger.  There is only one Prince of Peace who wears a crown fitted for His majestic head.  There is only one Kingdom which has no end. There has never been and there will never be another messenger speak to Joseph about his only love being with child, even though never touched by any man.  Only one time did God leave heaven and enter human flesh for the one and only sacrifice that had to be shed for mankind.  Jesus is the only lamb slain to break the curse of sin and death. There was no other hand that held that horrible cup of suffering that this little baby had to endure to fulfill His once-only mission. There was only one time when the great 'I AM' turned His face from His only Son. And, as all of this has been done, there is only one title for that one and only Savior and it is: 'King of Kings and Lord of Lords,' and He shall reign for one time and one time only, 'forever and ever.'