Draw me! We will run after you! The king brings me into his apartments! We will be glad and rejoice in you! We will recall [when we were favored with] your love, more fragrant than wine. The upright [are not offended at your choice, but sincerely] love you. Songs Of Solomon 1:4
Remember his marvellous works that he hath done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth. Psalm 105:5
On January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia lifted off for what was supposed to be a routine flight. Shortly after lift-off a piece of insulating foam from the shuttle’s external fuel tanks broke off and struck Columbia’s left wing. This action was caught on video, but it was presumed that no serious damage had occurred. However, serious damage had occurred. The foam from the fuel tanks punctured the wing’s thermal protection system.
The seriousness of the damage became evident when Columbia reentered the earth’s atmosphere on February 1. The damaged wing was no longer protected from the extreme heat caused during reentry. The shuttle disintegrated in midair killing all seven astronauts. NASA’s failure to correctly assess the damage prevented it from taking action that could have avoided the devastating results.
Mankind faces a similar but even more tragic situation. Shortly after creation, Adam sinned. With Adam as the head, the whole human race fell under God’s condemnation. Sin now rules every unregenerate heart, and if it had its way, it would destroy and damn every soul.
What Does God Think About Your Sin?
If you refuse to see your sin as God does, you cannot escape His eternal judgment. If you want to deny your guilt or hide your own sinfulness, you’ll never discover the cure for sin. And if you try to justify your sin, you’ll forfeit the justification of God. Until you understand how offensive your sin is before God, you can never know Him.
Sin is abominable to God-He hates it (cf. Deuteronomy 12:31). Sin is contrary to His nature (Isaiah 6:3; 1 John 1:5). It stains the soul and degrades humanity’s nobility. Scripture calls sin “filthiness” (Proverbs 30:12; Ezekiel 24:13; James 1:21) and likens it to a putrefying corpse-sinners are the tombs that contain stench and foulness (Matthew 23:27). The ultimate penalty-death-is the consequence of sin (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; Romans 6:3). The human race is in bad shape.
God wants you to understand how bad sin is and how terrifying its consequences are. You dare not take sin lightly or dismiss your own guilt frivolously. Quite the contrary-you should hate sin.
But sin tempts the best of saints, and even the godliest among us commit sin. David was a man who followed after God with all his heart (1 Kings 14:8); and yet he entered into temptation and committed unimaginable sin-adultery, deception, betrayal, and murder. And until God confronted David through the prophet Nathan, David denied his sin. That’s the natural tendency of every fallen sinner.
What Do You Think About Your Sin?
If a man of David’s caliber can fall so terribly, where does that leave you and me? If you’re honest, you’ll admit that you sometimes love your sin, delight in it, and seek opportunities to act it out. You know instinctively you are guilty before a holy God, yet you inevitably attempt to camouflage or disavow your sinfulness. In a word, you deny it, just like David did.
Like the rest of fallen humanity, your denial of sin falls into three general categories: you seek to cover it up, you try to justify yourself, and, most often, you are oblivious to your sin.
First, you try to cover up. That’s what King David tried to do when he sinned against Uriah. He had committed adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. When she became pregnant, David first plotted to make it seem as if Uriah was the father of the baby (2 Samuel 11:5-13). When that didn’t work, he schemed to have Uriah killed (vv. 14-17). That only compounded his sin.
For all the months of Bathsheba’s pregnancy, David continued to cover his sin (2 Samuel 11:27). Later, when David repented, he confessed, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer” (Psalm 32:3-4).
Second, you attempt to justify yourself. Adam blamed Eve, whom he described as “the woman whom You gave to be with me” (Genesis 3:12, emphasis added). In blaming Eve, Adam was blaming God too. God, he reasoned, was responsible for the woman who victimized him.
You also try to excuse your wrongdoing by saying it’s someone else’s fault. Or you argue that you have a valid reason for sin. You convince yourself that it’s OK to return evil for evil (cf. Proverbs 24:29; 1
Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9). You can call sin a sickness, a mental condition, or a hormone imbalance; you can excuse yourself as a victim; you can even deny what you’ve done is really wrong. Your sinful heart is endlessly creative in finding ways to justify its own evil.
Third, you can be oblivious to your own sin. Whether in ignorance or presumption, you sin, and you sin often. That’s why David prayed, “Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins” (Psalm 19:12-13). It’s those “hidden faults” that God sees in plain daylight, and they are just as offensive to Him as the “presumptuous sins.” Because sin is so pervasive, you naturally tend to be insensitive to your own sin, just as a skunk is impervious to its own odor.
What Are You Going to Do About Your Sin?
Sin is a horrible malignancy for which there is no human cure. It is an incurable leprosy of the soul (Isaiah 1:4-6), and all humanity is sick with it from top to bottom, inside and out.
As a sinner, you cannot improve your own condition. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” Your tears and sorrow can’t atone for your sin. Your “good” deeds can’t make amends for your wrong against God. Your prayers and personal devotion can’t soften your guilt or cover it in any way.
And don’t buy into the erroneous concept of purgatory-the fires of hell over a million lifetimes could never purify the soul from its own corruption or atone for its own sin. If you are looking for a do-it-yourself solution to the problem of sin, you only shackle yourself all the more securely to your guilt.
But there has to be a solution to our problem; there must be a way God can satisfy His perfect righteousness and still display His rich mercy toward sinners. I’m delighted to tell you that there is a solution to the human sin problem-it’s called the Gospel. The cross of Christ provided the way to God by enabling the only acceptable Sacrifice to atone for human sin once for all.
Our Lord, the sinless One, was the Lamb of God offered as a perfect sacrifice for sin (John 1:29)-it was the very purpose for which He came. “You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). Isaiah prophesied, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried…He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him” (Isaiah 53:4-5, emphasis added).
Jesus Christ “offered Himself without blemish to God” to cleanse our consciences (Hebrews 9:14). He paid the penalty to the fullest on our behalf. All the sins of everyone who believes are imputed to Christ, and He died for them. Jesus then rose from the dead to declare His victory over sin and death-”[He] was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:25).
Furthermore, God reckons all believers righteous in Christ-He accounts Christ’s righteousness to the believer. That’s the truth taught in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
God redeems those who believe and makes them new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17). If you are a believer, you know what I’m talking about. God gave you an entirely new nature, including a love for righteousness and hatred for sin.
If you’re unsure of your salvation, reading this should bring you to the point of despair. What can you possibly do to change your hopeless condition? Nothing. You are utterly dependent on God’s mercy. But if the cry of your heart is something akin to that of the Philippian jailer who said, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), take heart-the Spirit of God is already working in you! Here is Jesus’ clear and concise command to the troubled sinner: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
To repent is to “turn away from all your transgressions” (Ezekiel 18:30). It means confessing and forsaking your iniquities (Proverbs 28:13), and completely hating your sin (2 Corinthians 7:11). If repentance stresses turning away from sin and self, believing emphasizes what to turn toward-”Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31).
You can’t lay hold of Christ while still clinging to your sin. Unless you pry your heart from the passing pleasures of sin, you’ll never see God. God’s salvation from the flames of an eternal hell involves a glorious liberation from the control of sin.
That’s good news! You can be set free from sin’s dominion of your life. Take hold of Christ, and take this gospel offer seriously. It may be your last opportunity!
Deuteronomy 12:31, Isaiah 6:3, 1 John 1:5, Proverbs 24:29
Adapted from The Vanishing Conscience © 1995 by John MacArthur.
Life can seem like a journey of Ups & Down’s sometimes, good things happen and bad things also inevitably happen (unfortunately) and a most common question amongst both believers and unbelievers is, why did God let these bad things happen? Is it because we’ve been bad, or to punish us? Well the answer to that is NO.
More often than not, God lets things come into our lives, not to destroy us but to build us up in character and help us become who we where destined before the beginning of time to be. Trials are not meant to put us down they are meant to build us up.
God knew you before the thought of a being like you even emerged on this earth, he knew your before the beginning of the earth, he made you just the way you are for a reason, he says ” Behold, I have carved you on the palms of My hands (Isaiah 49:16)”, he knows us even to tiny details about us, check this out “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered (Matthew 10:30)”, do you have every strand of your hair numbered? I’m guessing the answer to that is an Obvious NO! He knows you better than you know yourself
His plans for you are Far Greater Than Yours Could Ever Be!!
I could write a thousand words about how God’s plan for you is always the best plan, I could tell you stories or even include videos of people whose life God’s plan was made manifest, though that would be extremely helpful, I will not do that in this case, what I want to do now is take you face to face with what God has to say about his plans, I want to drive home just three short points.
Let me take you on a little Journey, Please Come with Me…
1 – He does not think the same way we do!
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9″ – This portion of scripture is marvelous (as so the whole scriptures) let this passage be a mirror for you and remind you that if God’s ways are so vastly different from our ways then we will inevitably not always understand what he is doing, and it may seldom make no sense to us, however if we wait on him and trust him, it will make more sense than we could ever have imagined, we can learn to trust God more by really falling in love with him and having an active relationship with him, think of it like a marriage, would you talk to your wife/husband once a week on a Sunday ? You would talk daily, and as you know him/her better your trust for him/her will increase, when you have an active relationship with God your trust will increase.
2 – He is THE master planner!
He didn’t put you on this earth for nothing, He has a plan specifically for you, Ephesians 1:11 says – “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” – This piece of scripture shows us that God has planned for us, even before our existence and everything that happens in our life is to enable us to be changed more to fit the purpose of his plan.
Romans 8:28 says “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”- There is a valuable lesson to be learned here, God calls us to his purpose, he plans for us, he lets both good and bad things get into our life, so we can be in the best shape to fulfill our Destiny; to do what we have predestined us to do, and because of this any bad things that happen to us is nothing compared to the glory that we will see in heaven, or on earth when we see Gods work coming to a completion in us.
Look at it this way, ever been to the gym? First its hard, and you feel pain afterwards, but after perseverance and consistency you begin the pain begins to go away, you become more confident about it, and before you know it, you see the muscles coming out! its the same concept with trials in our lives, they are not to destroy us, even if they hurt, just like the gym hurts, it would be just for a while 
3 – Doe’s it all come down to Love?
In the scripture above (Romans 8:28) The promise there includes this “all things good works for the good of those who love him” not only is loving God a prerequisite to be able to stand on this promise and fully proclaim its promises and any other promise in the bible, it also shows that the Christian life is more of a relationship with God than anything else, again think of it like a marriage, in marriage love doesn’t decrease with time, it increases, through the good times and the bad times together, they get closer. Knowing each other much better than they knew each other when they first fell in love, their love grows stronger. Our love for God grows stronger when we spend more time with him, and meditate on his word, he becomes more of a strong active reality with us, and I tell you friends when God is that real to you, even a multitude of problems can not move the very sole of your feet, the problems of the world become nothing to you, because you live in an active reality of the presence of God, This is my wish and prayer for myself and every one who reads this, that God would become so real to us, and his love would abide so much in us, that we can truly and honestly do what is said in James 1:2 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds”
Thank you very much for coming on this journey with me, Remember that no matter what happens, God’s plan will always prevail, and strive to get closer to him everyday, let his love be real in you, and let his light shine through you, so when the darkness of troubles and trials come (which they will) Your light would be shining so bright it would do nothing but re-enforce the truth that you are a shining light, SHINE TO THE WORLD FRIENDS!
Shalom!
PS: I encourage you to forward this and share this with any friends or family you know that may be going through trials, be a blessing.
Hello guys, friends can be different things to different people, but here I’m particularly addressing real friendship, there’s something about friendship that’s so fascinating. Friends can lift you up, they can pull you down, and they can be like medicine to help you heal your wounds. They’re around when you have no one to talk to, they know all the things you do so you don’t need to hide things from them, and sometimes when you’re down their very presence could uplift you and get you smiling again J.
Dear reader, who is your friend? Who is that person that you could always count on?, someone who would never let you down, that person you have spent time both building and cultivating a relationship with, slowly getting to know each other, finding out what each other likes and what they love to do, that person who knows all your secrets? Truth is, we all need a friend, and not feeling the need of friendship could be more of insecurity; than independence.
The important message here is, our friends can make us or break us. Friendship is a good thing and one of the most important parts of our lives; the kind of friends you have or choose to have could either destroy your life or help you get one step closer to your destiny. There are some things to consider when choosing friends that need to be in your life and friends that don’t need to be in your life. These are things much deeper than “we get along” (though that is an important factor). Here are some important things to consider:
What kind of values do they add to your life: When we are around people they influence us, either positively or negatively, and they enable us to carefully study our friends and the values they have added to our lives. This could be a very good factor in determining if that friend is worth keeping, or if that friendship may not be the best.
How truthful are they to you?: When you do something you know is wrong, and it’s clearly obvious your friend knows so too, do they tell you it’s wrong or do they just support you in doing the wrong things? If a person truly loves you, as any person worth being called a friend should, they would tell you what you do is wrong, and help you work towards changing it. This is vitally important because, if you have an aspect of your character that drastically needs change, and your friend knows about it but keeps it from you, that could ruin you later on in life, and the chances of you changing it may be slimmer simply because you would feel that people previously around you accepted it and feel it’s not wrong, but if those who love you and who you spend most of your time with when you get into the teenage years point it out to you, you’re more likely to change.
No One is Perfect – We all have faults, and one of the duties of a good friend is to advise us on our faults, because as we probably all know it’s more difficult to see your own fault.
Whats the point of the friendship? – Yea, you read it right, “What is the point?” As friends what do you guys do together, do you add values to each other’s lives or do you take away from each other’s lives? This should help you decide if the friendship is an asset (Helping you get forward) or a liability (Pulling you back).
Is it hindering your most important relationships with your most important friend? – Is your friendship hindering your relationship with Jesus? Truth is, Jesus is your most important friend, he is the only friend who would never let us down, and who knows all our secrets and loves us.
I’m in no way saying ignore all your friends, what I’m saying is, maybe some friendships should be left at “Hello/Hi” while others could get a bit deeper?
Well it’s a new year, maybe it’s time to get rid of the liabilities in your life and bring in some assets ?
Have a Great Year,
Stay Blessed.
Some people say that life is short, I see that as true because life is simply a path to something greater, a way for you to decide where you spend eternity depending on your performance.l In principle, it’s the same way college or school is a way for you to decide where you take your life next depending on how well you perform and how seriously you take it. For this reason alone we see that life is nothing outside of Jesus because without God in the equation life would all be pointless. If we came from the Big Bang theory which was an accident, this would mean we are a product of an accident, we are a meaningless existence. However, think about this: Have you ever met anyone who believes they don’t have a purpose or even a destiny ? I for one have not, therefore, this alone is proof enough that we have a loving God that is the Creator!
Sometimes we forget what God means to us and we search for answers and explanations to questions even though the answer is inside us. With this knowledge that we now have it is extra important to live our life the way it should be lived, lead a life of purpose and ambition. Live a life that is for a reason which would ultimately glorify God
A lot of people make mistakes by looking at their present situation and give up on hope because they feel it’s too late to change or because they feel change is too difficult. However, let me tell you something: God thinks differently, through the bible God says “for I know the plans I have for you and they are not plans for bad but plans to give you a hope and a future”.
I see something called destiny written all over that, that is your destiny to achieve what God has for you, if you are doing anything else then that is not in line with God’s ultimate plan for your life! One thing God taught me is that he showed me it’s never too late for change and he never gives up on any humble heart that turns to him for forgiveness and redemption, he can take your life and turn it around, stop trying to do things you have always tried to do that has never worked.
Give God a serious try and let him work wonders through your life, I am living proof that this is true, I boldly say this because he has brought me a long way from a life that was taking me nowhere but to death and terrifying hell! I dare you to take a step today, cry out to God untill he changes you and saves you from your own self. Be humble about it, tell him that you need him in your heart, tell him that you have messed up if you are serious about change and be honest about your words, he won’t let you down! Take the first step to becoming the real you today! Let God change you! God bless.
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