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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Storms

" And there he squandered his estate with loose living." Luke 15:12b. Last week we talked about praying for one's family, now. While they are in the midst of the storm or they are in the calm, of a sunny day. If you have lived a small amount of time you know that storms come up quite often. And the storms of personal life come up often too. Sometimes there quick thunder storms, sometimes there with flooding rain, sometimes with sever winds...and sometimes the rain comes for days at a time... And when the storm comes sometimes it hit a small area and sometimes it covers vast areas. Now we are not talking about the weather only.
Back to our story; the younger son is in the midst of a storm. Here's the thing guys; I believe he doesn't even know it. This is the type of storm that keeps growing slowly. So this young man is in the middle of a big storm and it's getting bigger. " Loose living" we don't have to think too hard to know what that means. Now some of us might think of only money but I believe it's a lot more(look at the end of the story). So here we have a young man in a middle of a storm and guess what? He is there all alone. He doesn't have faithful friends(God believing). But I believe He has the prayers of his father. Sometimes the storm, will calm down for a bit only to hit harder. They can be tricky! Keeping us pinned down, trapped.
Have you ever been caught up in something, rebellion...sin, that seems to be o.k. That is, it isn't affecting anyone...everything seems to be going alright...You might even be saying no one knows, what's the big deal. Let's face it we can be very secret men...everything is just fine..things are still going well. It may even seem to be going better than before... But there is nothing that our God doesn't see. Prov. 15:3 "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good." Last week we talked about prayer, using David as an example. So let's continue using David as an example. You see there was a reason that David was praying for his son, or better yet why his son was sick unto death. 2Sam. 11 is the account of David's sin with Bathsheba...something that he tried to keep secret, but God sees. God revels to David that He knows...2Sam. 12 and in verse 10-14 He tells him the consequences of his sin. One of them being that his son will die. You see sin does all kind of things, not good things and sin also, for the most part has consequences. Our (your) sin affects you and the ones around you... It needs to be addressed! We need to ask for forgiveness...Let me end with one more thought. You ask God to forgive you of your sin, what then? Have you heard the word repent? How about put off the old and put on the new? So many times when we repent of a sin...we don't put on the new. That is we stop the old sinful action but we don't replace it with a new action. Then before one realizes he returns back to the old. Now when we talk about new, we are talking about Christ like; Godly actions. So let me end with this phrase, "sin destroys and forgiveness restores."