Striving against sin.
Heb 12:3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
Heb 12:4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
We strive against sin.
Why? Because sin separates us from God.
The other day as I was reading this-
Joh_14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
-something dawned on me. Strangely enough I should have seen it long ago, and I'm sure many people have but it took me awhile to get it.
Jesus is saying, if you love me-then love me.
When we are told to keep Christ's commandments we are told His first and greatest commandment is to love Him. If we love Him we will love Him and get this… He is love. We love Him with Him, by Him.
1Jn_4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
If ye love me- love me.
How simple that sounds.
We tell others we love them all the time, and we desire love all the time. We love by being loving, right? Even if sometimes that love means being harsh and chastising we love by being loving. Loving doesn't simply mean never causing the one you love to feel various emotions - anger, anxious, sad. Not right now at least. We are caused to go through hardships now because we are being refined in a fire, a cleansing, purifying, teaching fire all so we can learn love from love. And when we love with our infinitely distorted ability to love we are striving against sin that would separate us from Love, from God.
We must strive, very actively strive against sin.
We cannot simply condone sin in us, even if we are easily beset over and over again. We must never condone it! Hate it, hate the sin in our flesh warring against our minds that we would have be in Christ!
Even if we enjoy it, hate that we enjoy it!
I know this is an awful analogy, but you often hear about abusive people putting their partner through abuse and afterwards apologizing profusely, hating that they've abuse them. It happens in a continuous cycle and often escalates, and the abuser often (NOT ALWAYS) but often HATES what they are doing but can't seem to stop. We sin and we hate it and we can't seem to stop. For all I know Your sin is being abusive to someone and you do truly hate it. We must STRIVE against sinning, actively WORK towards NO LONGER SINNING. We can't accept it in ourselves not ever! We would want anyone who is an abuser to seek counseling to be healed from their abusive tendencies, not simply accept it or ignore they have a problem. If they are striving against abusing they will do ALL they can to stop. We must do ALL we can to stop sinning when we know we are sinning. We must STRIVE!
Please LORD, help us to STRIVE against sin!
Help us to resist unto BLOOD.
All by Your amazing grace, Your amazing love that we can scarcely comprehend!
Help us to love You by loving You, keeping Your commandments - all of them a revelation of Your love.
By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, love us, know us.
All glory, honor, and praise unto You our Savior, our King!
Heb 12:3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
Heb 12:4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
We strive against sin.
Why? Because sin separates us from God.
The other day as I was reading this-
Joh_14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
-something dawned on me. Strangely enough I should have seen it long ago, and I'm sure many people have but it took me awhile to get it.
Jesus is saying, if you love me-then love me.
When we are told to keep Christ's commandments we are told His first and greatest commandment is to love Him. If we love Him we will love Him and get this… He is love. We love Him with Him, by Him.
1Jn_4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
If ye love me- love me.
How simple that sounds.
We tell others we love them all the time, and we desire love all the time. We love by being loving, right? Even if sometimes that love means being harsh and chastising we love by being loving. Loving doesn't simply mean never causing the one you love to feel various emotions - anger, anxious, sad. Not right now at least. We are caused to go through hardships now because we are being refined in a fire, a cleansing, purifying, teaching fire all so we can learn love from love. And when we love with our infinitely distorted ability to love we are striving against sin that would separate us from Love, from God.
We must strive, very actively strive against sin.
We cannot simply condone sin in us, even if we are easily beset over and over again. We must never condone it! Hate it, hate the sin in our flesh warring against our minds that we would have be in Christ!
Even if we enjoy it, hate that we enjoy it!
I know this is an awful analogy, but you often hear about abusive people putting their partner through abuse and afterwards apologizing profusely, hating that they've abuse them. It happens in a continuous cycle and often escalates, and the abuser often (NOT ALWAYS) but often HATES what they are doing but can't seem to stop. We sin and we hate it and we can't seem to stop. For all I know Your sin is being abusive to someone and you do truly hate it. We must STRIVE against sinning, actively WORK towards NO LONGER SINNING. We can't accept it in ourselves not ever! We would want anyone who is an abuser to seek counseling to be healed from their abusive tendencies, not simply accept it or ignore they have a problem. If they are striving against abusing they will do ALL they can to stop. We must do ALL we can to stop sinning when we know we are sinning. We must STRIVE!
Please LORD, help us to STRIVE against sin!
Help us to resist unto BLOOD.
All by Your amazing grace, Your amazing love that we can scarcely comprehend!
Help us to love You by loving You, keeping Your commandments - all of them a revelation of Your love.
By the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, love us, know us.
All glory, honor, and praise unto You our Savior, our King!
No comments:
Post a Comment