About 20 years ago I was on an outdoor show that featured a spectacular Marlin and sail fishing trip that I went on in Costa Rico. The raw footage was being edited and the host’s question and answer session was being added in at a television studio in Birmingham Alabama. While I was there at the studio I met a guy whose Marlin fishing trip out of Orange Beach Alabama was also being highlighted on the same show.
In talking with him I found out that his family had invented a camera that could be inserted in oil pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and the tiny camera could travel through miles of pipeline and check for leaks. It was an ingenious device and he told me that the same technology was later used in humans to travel through arteries looking for blockages.
Such blockages can be fatal and in fact I’ve lost a couple of friends to this problem along with some near misses. It seems that high cholesterol and other problems will build up plaque in the arteries and restrict blood flow and bad things happen which can lead to stroke and/or heart failure.
Hmmm… I was thinking of this problem and could not help but draw similarities to sin in our lives. Imagine a direct artery to God’s blessings in our lives. God wants to bless us, but is restricted from doing so by the sin that gets in the way. In some cases it chokes off God entirely and His light will be blocked in its entirety.
In the same manner that plaque buildup causes physical death, we experience spiritual death in choking out God from our lives.
It seems that smoking, eating fatty foods high in cholesterol, and not exercising are the primary causes of the fatal buildup, and yet people nonchalantly continue to suck on their cigarettes, gorge on their fatty foods and wouldn’t dream of exercising.
Occasionally someone will have a close encounter with death and/or wise up and reform their ways and change their lifestyle. While all of the damage cannot be reversed, generally lives can be saved. I think of sin in the same light. There are always consequences for sin and it is often severe, but there is no question that reducing it to an absolute minimum will enhance all of our lives by allowing God’s light to begin to flow within our being.
This week I received a 35 page letter from an inmate serving 20 years for bank robbery. He’d read my book and told me that he was the opposite of me. He went from riches to rags because of cocaine addiction. His wealthy family had friends among the rich and famous and included everyone from the Governor down. They showered him with money in his youth and even gave him a brand new corvette at the tender age of 14. His brother was the youngest mayor of the town that they lived in and it seemed that they would soar like eagles. Instead both went wild and pursued a life of sin and both are currently locked away in prison suffering the consequences of their sins.
He is now 49 years old and still has 15 years to serve. He wrecked his car in a high speed chase after the bank robbery and his spine has four vertebrae fused together and he is in constant pain.
There are grave consequences to sin and he is testimony to that fact.
Recently I donated my book to every prison in Florida and he was the first person in his institution to read it. He is now seeking Jesus and opening his mind and his heart to God’s saving, healing power. It has given him hope and a reason for living where there was none. I pray that he will stay on course and wrote to him to encourage him.
My friends it is never too late to find God. God cannot tolerate sin however, and if we want the blessings to flow, we must deal with it. Giving up sin is like giving up that addictive nicotine that is absolutely craved, cramming those yummy fat foods in our mouths, and having to sweat and work hard instead of lounging in the air conditioning while lying on a comfortable couch staring at the “one-eyed God” TV set.
It ain’t easy, but is worth the effort.
Sin is defined in the Bible. God has vowed that His word will never change. We should read it and try our utmost to follow the commands therein. The reward is a flood of God’s blessings which are so good as to be incomprehensible.
Isaiah 40:8
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.