Do what it takes and take what it does

Do what it takes to make it through
Take what it does dish out to you through it all

Proverbs 20:
9 Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin."
27 The lamp of the Lord searches the spirit of a man; it searches out his inmost being.
30 Blows and wounds clean away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.

After reading Velvet Elvis a while back I understood a little bit more about the Jewish priests and the way that they taught. Most of the time the priests would answer in questions, if you look to the way that Jesus taught, it was in questions, questions that were self answering and pointed to the truth of the matter.

It is as if Solomon, wise king, is doing the same here. Someone has perhaps condemned someone of a wrong doing. Some great sin has been committed and everyone is pointing a finger. So...who among you can say that I've kept my heart pure; and I'm clean, without sin.

Frankly I think at that point everyone would have backed down, every person who said they had not, would have lied, and thus sinned.

Sin is not one of the big 5 (because everyone ignores half of the ten commandments). Sin is not even one of the ten commandments being broken. Those were given to the Jews because they were hard headed like we are and needed a physical reminder of what was already written on everyones hearts at conception. Why do you think that the 10 commandments are basically obeyed in most societies to some extent with maybe one odd twist here or there. We were all created with the same genetic pre-disposition to obey God. Sin, distorted and disrupted that pre-disposition to something anti-God.

This is what sin is. Anti-God. Apart from God. God cannot have anything to do with the sin nature, so anything that is apart from Him is considered sin. Unfortunately because we are born into this sin, because of the original sin, we do it day in and day out. Sure some people commit one of the big 10, but that makes them no worse off than someone who told a small white lie, or had a dirty thought. It was apart from God.

No one is above this.

Except Jesus, born without a sin nature.
Because as declared, the sin nature is passed down through the man, and Jesus was born of a virgin woman, Mary.

So how do you know when you've done something apart from God, how do you know you've sinned?

Go back a few years to the now obsolete technology, the overhead projector.
Light would shine through a transparent sheet of plastic, and project whatever ink stood in the way of the light onto the wall. The image that appeared was the absence of light.

Think of God as that overhead projector, he blasts us with his pure unadulterated light and whatever is not of him stands out like writing on the wall. His light searches you out. It exposes your sin, and Christ says, see you've got it too. No matter how small.

You hang your head in shame. How could Christ ever love me? How could I have so much sin?

Something I struggle with daily.

It's ok.

I've heard people say, well once you "get saved" you don't sin any more. I think the wordage of that phrase is a lie from satan. That is something that is used to guilt more Christians from being effective in their walk.

Once you accept Christ you have an out from sin.

Does that mean you always take it?
Heck no.
We're geared that way. We want to sin, because it's fun for a while.

Let me take a step back to the accepting Christ part. The last verse in proverbs talks about beating the evil out, and beatings purge the inmost being. Unfortunately this is misconstrued in some religions as abuse, and self abuse. I think that it's talking about a couple things, a) the blows that come to your ego or your personality because of the admittance of your sin. It hurts to say, I'm sorry. I screwed up. For some reason though, this is also cleansing. b) It has almost a prophetic meaning, speaking of Christ who through his beatings, and death was brought the ultimate cleansing for each person from their sin.

Because on the cross Christ took every person's sin upon himself that ever lived and ever would live. God had to turn his back on his son. Why? because God cannot be a part of sin.

Christ rose from the dead so that we may have the hope of salvation and ever lasting life from this dead and sinful world. Free of guilt.
A free gift.

We're asked to follow him, but that is a small return.

Let His light filter through you and expose the sin in your own life, things you need to confess and claim the blood of Christ over. Reading these passages have brought to light things in my own life.

My own writing on the wall.

What is yours? (meant as an introspective question)