"Moving Past Sinful Failure"

That's the title of today's piece at Our Daily Bread.

Before reading it, be sure to first read the powerful passage of Scripture on which today's installment of 'Our Daily Bread' is based, 1 Samuel 11:27-12:23.  It's one of the most powerful, poignant, and instructive passages in all the Bible. It underscores that God is both gracious and just: God forgives the sin of the repentant; but sin can still have consequences for the forgiven. 

When we genuinely pray for forgiveness of sin, we place ourselves under the authority of God, what some rightly call the sovereignty of God. Any time we repent for sin, we also implicitly place our lives in the hands of God. 

David accepted God's forgiveness...and God's sovereignty. 

God teach me to do no less. 

Hiding in Plain Sight

"Sin detected can contrive all manner of veils to cover its nakedness." (Edith Pargeter, writing as Ellis Peters in The Holy Thief)

Peters' (Pargeter's) Brother Cadfael mysteries, set in twelfth century Shrewsbury, England, is brain candy, but good diversionary reads. She was a beautifully descriptive writer and along the way often shares little gems of insight like the one above.

Confession of Sin is Agreement with God

This is what my colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot presented in his daily emailed inspiration this morning:

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Thought for the Day

Real confession means to say the same thing about sin that
God says. Real confession involves humbling ourselves and
agreeing with him about the very nature of our sinfulness. To live
under the blessing of heaven is to always be running toward God
with our guilt and not away from him

Jim Cymbala
The Church God Blesses, p. 94-95

Scripture
Psalm 32:5 TNIV

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD."
And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Prayer
Lord, lead me to real honest confession of all my sin.
Amen

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The bottom line, of course, is that when we disagree with God about sin, guess whose opinion needs to change?

When Tolerance Becomes Hate

A high school classmate just posted this quote from writer G.K. Chesterton over on Facebook:

Tolerance is the virtue of a man [sic] without convictions.

It was great seeing Chesterton's words. I love him anyway! He was a big joyous man who was loved even by the atheists with whom he debated.

But these particular words of Chesterton's relate to issues I've been thinking about a lot lately.

These days, we--Christians and non-Christians in the West--have elevated "tolerance" to the highest human virtue. So much so, in fact, that a member of one of my former parishes told me once that, so far as he could tell, the gospel message was, "Live and let live." I wondered what Bible he had been reading.

Christians should have no desire--any more than Jesus Himself did--to coerce people into repentance for sin or faith in Christ, of course. (That's why I oppose political involvement by the Church or by pastors.) No one comes to faith in Christ and no one places themselves under the pull of God's Holy Spirit toward holy living by coercion.

But a "live and let live" attitude is usually just another way of saying, "Live and let die." Or, "Live and ignore." For believers in Christ, when tolerance comes up against God's revealed truth, tolerance must give way to truth. It must also give way to love.

If a child has the notion that sticking her or his finger into an electrical outlet would be fun, the last thing a responsible parent would do is tolerate this impulse. The parent would do everything conceivable to prevent the child from harming himself or herself. Love and truth would trump parental tolerance.

Just so, the Church has a God-given responsibility to militate against a lazy, indifferent tolerance, to instead, opt for love and truth in warning people who ask us for an account for the hope that is in us through Christ, to make them aware of the destructive consequences of flouting God's will, whether it's expressed in materialism, injustice, egotism, lovelessness, covetousness, or sex outside of marriage.

If we claim to love family or friends, then to tolerate rationalizations for sin is to conspire in the deaths of those Christ calls us to love and with whom Christ commissions us to share the gospel.

Tolerance becomes hate when we refuse to speak the truth in love, when we fail to share the good news of new life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ.