Rising Above Our Sin

Life’s Like This — Someone that has truly stood face to face with God in their heart and their spirit, will find it very hard, very nearly impossible, to turn back from that revelation of Him in their life. They may suffer setbacks; they will fail in certain areas of their life; different things can creep in and dilute life at times, and their may be certain times of wavering. But if you look back over a long span of time, you’ll find them always progressing. Somewhere in their heart and in their life they are growing and they are even learning from their failures. I remember as a child, about the age of eight, that I first came to know about Jesus. I did not have an epiphany, as some people do, but through Sunday School lessons, and my mother’s faith, I came to know Christ and the gift of salvation that He gave, not only to me, but to all of mankind. It was a gift that I had accepted by asking Jesus to come into my heart, to forgive my sins, and to help me live my life for Him. But if truth be told, I did not fully understand and appreciate, at that young age, the magnitude of suffering that Christ paid on the cross for my sins. I did not, at that age, even comprehend the significance of sin in my life and the hold it will have on my behavior and the consequences that would follow me all through my life as a result of living a life riddled with sin.

I think that is true for most of us that profess to know Christ. We want to serve Christ; we want to be faithful in our walk, and we want to grow in our faith and love for Him, but we find ourselves constantly waging a war with Satan and the trappings of sin that he lays across our path, hoping that we will succumb to them. This is the nature of the world we live in — there will always be temptation attempting to separate us from God. It does not matter how strong our faith in Christ is, nor how devoted our walk with Him may be, the forces of sin will do its utmost to uproot the seeds of faith that were planted in our heart and spirit. And while we may often fail in our walk, the seed of our knowledge of Christ is always within our hearts, waiting for its nourishment, and the pruning that comes with trials of life that can draw us closer in our walk and love for Him. We just need to allow our hearts and spirit to become one with Christ, to abandon to the best of our ability the power and allure of sin, and to rise above our sinful state to a point where satan’s power in our life is so weakened that he will find no stronghold within us. Living our lives for Christ is not an easy road to follow; it must be fortified with the armor of God to allow us the victory we seek and want to claim in our lives.

Finding the courage to defeat sin in our lives and to come face to face with God in our hearts and spirit will usher in renewed faith, renewed hope, and renewed joy in knowing and delighting in the will of God. Once the seed of faith is planted within us, it will always remain there, waiting for us to nourish it and to prune back the branches of life that cause us to stumble and fall in our walk with Christ. Yet, despite the setbacks in our walk, there is always a yearning to come back into fellowship with God. Within us, there is an inner voice that cries out to God, asking Him to welcome you back into the family of believers. As amazing as it may sound, God will never leave us — we may turn our back on Him, we may get caught up in the sins of the world, and we may even live a life that is so reprehensible that we might think we have permanently severed our relationship with HIm. The good news is that nothing we could do, with possibly a few exceptions, can separate us from God, if we truly have a heartfelt desire to know Him. God loves us. He does not expect us to magically arrive at a point of complete knowledge and love for Him without going through trials of life that serve to edify and prepare us to truly know and embrace His will for our lives. But as He continues to reveal Himself to us, we need to rest assured that He will always be waiting patiently for us to recover from our stumbles, learning from our failures, and coming at long-last to know and delight in the joy of truly knowing Him.