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Tuesday, April 2, 2013

No Perfection Here

Most people I've met who have apostatized from the faith have told me that the reason they apostatized was because of all the hypocrisy in the church. It's the living a lie, that they hate. So they left. But no Christian is ever going to be perfect. They will always fall. But I think the important thing to remember is that, a Christian is one who sins, but repents and confesses their sins. It's no longer swept under the carpet. It's not kept hidden from others, because of a sense of shame and a wanton lust to continue living in that sin, it is confessed and repented of. We see this repentance in David's Psalm 51, after Nathan the prophet reproved him for his sin. 

First, David cries out to God with a heart that needs God's grace and compassion. He asks that the Lord wash him of His sin. We need to remember that we have no part in this washing. We can't wash ourselves. It always reminds me of when Eustace, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is turned into a dragon and attempts to scratch all his scales off. It's useless. But then Aslan offers to tear the scales off, and he rips them off. 

"The very first tear he made it was so deep that I thought it had gone right in to my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh, but it is such fun to see it coming away. He peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been… and then I saw why, I’d turned into a boy again."

Remember, all our sins are just against the Lord. David says, "Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge." In a sense, when all the hullabaloo that goes on in the large sectors of the world about our complete moral breakdown is brought up, we just need to remember that these sins are against God. He is the only one that we have sinned against, because it's His law that matters. When we hide our sins under the carpet, or "in the closet" it doesn't matter. God sees everything. And His opinion is the only one that matters. That's why scouring God's Word is so earnestly important. We need to find that which is evil in His sight in our lives and expel it. Praying on your knees and with hope in the grace of God like David does in this prayer is so needed. Going to hear the preaching of the Word and the encouragement of the saints is of utmost importance. We are weak, but through God and the means that He has given us, we are strong.


"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." ~ Philippians 4:13

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