Mistakes will occur

My creative consultant friend who is helping me with my book read my most recent chapter and afterwards questioned my Christian walk. This portion of the book that he had just read was at a critical juncture where I had just spent 7 agonizing years being punished by God for sins against Him. Not long after the brutal punishment had lifted I went right back out and once again committed a rather glaring sin.

My friend could not understand why I would do such a thing right after learning such a huge lesson and having enhanced my spirituality and nearness to God because of it.

Hmmm. My response in part was as follows: You (and the readers) should understand that Christians are never going to achieve perfection in this life. Today I’ve improved my spiritual walk even more than this period of my life, but I still have a very long way to go and guess what? I will never get there! In spite of my best efforts, I will on occasion continue to sin until I die and go on to heaven. My punishment for those sins will be exacted in this life and sometimes it can be brutal. At a minimum it will mean that I cannot find peace and enjoy this life as much as I otherwise could. I don’t like to think what it might be at a maximum, but the Bible states that punishment for sin could even include death.

Often non-Christians see a glaring mistake that a Christian makes and they immediately either interpret it as that person being hypocritical or that the Christian thing just doesn’t work.

Not so! Christians realize that they are not perfect, (just forgiven). Those mistakes (sins) are still going to haunt us even after asking Jesus to come into our lives. This phenomenon is the reason that Jesus had to die on the cross. We can never achieve perfection in this life because of our fallen natures. That is why Jesus came to this earth. We can now receive forgiveness for our sins for what Jesus (who is perfect) did on the cross in our stead.

This incident of me committing a sin was just another example of a long line of my shortcomings and me resisting complete obedience to God’s commands. I knew my feelings were wrong. Of course as my book demonstrates there is always a price for disobedience and mine in this instance was that in spite of my success in most every area of life, I still could not find absolute peace. After many years of this the Lord put it on my heart one day to do something about this issue to correct it and I did. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do, but I learned that obedience to God has its rewards. This had been weighing heavily on me all that time and yet when I addressed it through simple obedience to God, the heavy burden was lifted in a moment. This is an example of God blessing my obedience.”

Oswald Chambers author of “Baffled to Fight Better” once said: “The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not intellect, but obedience. If a man wants scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches, he can only get it by obedience.”

God blesses that obedience, but make no mistake about it He punishes disobedience and sometimes that punishment is furious With that in mind we should fight sin with all that we have, but if we do occasionally fail, we should know that Jesus has forgiven that sin and move on with a determination not to make that same mistake again

Romans 2:8
…for those who are governed by selfish ambition, who refuse obedience to the truth and take the wrong for their guide, there will be the fury of retribution.