"Your difficulty is Your sin..."

Chapter 2 - The Call to Discipleship  (continued)

Bonhoeffer- 'Unbelief thrives on cheap grace, for it is determined to persist in disobedience.'

My thoughts- How true this is.  Those who say they find it hard to believe want someone to tell them that it's easy and very simple, just do it and don't worry about anything else.  The truth is that we need to OBEY to BELIEVE and BELIEVE to OBEY, the two, as we've learned, are inseparable.  Those who do not want to obey will leap at the chance to grab ahold of cheap grace, a grace- a belief, that they can have faith without any action at all. They are content to a cling to faith without works believing that their faith is not dead. Yet the Bible tells us this--

Jas 2:24  Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

Jas 2:20  But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

Yet people want to believe that they can have faith without obeying, they comfort themselves with this belief and they are deceived.

Bonhoeffer- (A pastor confronting one who does not want to believe that to believe is to obey.) '"You are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. That is what is preventing you from listening to Christ and believing in his grace. You cannot hear Christ because you are willfully disobedient. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call. Your difficulty is your sins." 

My thoughts- 'Your difficulty is your sins.'   NO one wants to hear those words because people are ATTACHED to their sins.  Remember this--

Heb_12:1  ... and the sin which doth so easily beset us…

The sin which doth so easily beset us, they are our CHERISHED sins. They so easily beset us because we LOVE those sins, they are a part of our lives giving us so much comfort, so much pleasure, so much contentment, so much ease. To SET aside those sins which so easily beset us means giving up pleasure, comfort, ease, contentment, enjoyment, happiness.   We don't want to admit something that is DEADLY (SIN) can bring us such joy, but it does because Satan wants us to have our minds focused on ourselves and only ourselves and our joy, not denying ourselves, not thinking of others at all.  As long as we are settled on focusing on our joy, our ease, our contentment, our happiness, our pleasure, our comfort etc, then we are susceptible to falling into sin. 

"Your difficulty is your sins.'  TRUTH! 

Please LORD, help us! Our sins beset us! Help us to lay them aside! Help us, LORD. Please, help us OBEY You in all things!