Joshua 7:16-9:2; Luke 16:1-18; Psalm 82:1-8; Proverbs 13:2-3
“Achan replied, ‘It is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. Among the plunder I saw a beautiful robe from Babylon, 200 silver coins, and a bar of gold weighing more than a pound. I wanted them so much that I took them. They are hidden in the ground beneath my tent, with the silver buried deeper than the rest.’”
“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?”
My problems seldom begin with big deals. I usually am well aware when I am in over my head if I start in the deep end. It’s when I just start wading into areas I shouldn’t go and gradually move deeper and deeper into sin that I end up foundering. I’m not alone; big corruption almost always has its genesis in little compromises. The devil seldom visits except undercover. Consequently, there are no “little compromises.” The wages of sin – all sin – is death. We disregard Paul’s warning at our peril.
Anger has always been my “big thing.” It took me many years, though, to learn that the rage I not so affectionately call “Red Dragon” usually built over time under the surface until it boiled over and burned anyone in the way. Something would irritate me. In mock “Christian charity,” I would swallow it, pretend to ignore it, and it would fester into resentment. That turned the focus completely on me and my hurt feelings. The resulting self-pity compounded resentment into, in turn: bitterness; anger; and finally rage. The cycle got shorter and shorter as my tolerance for even minor irritations became less and less. Pretty soon, I was lost and had no idea how things could have gone so far wrong.
No, the answer was not to give vent to every little imagined or real slight or offense. That kind of overt negativism creates an isolation even deeper than fits of anger. The answer was to start paying attention, and to bring Christ into the picture as soon as irritation raised its ugly head. It’s a little harder, for example, to be enraged about being passed over for a promotion when one first thinks about what happened on the Cross. In that context, injustice and agony have an entirely different meaning, and our anger pales in comparison to what God had the unquestioned right to feel.
The thing is, the Father wrapped His agony in love and it turned into redemption! Now, I’ll never be that good; I’ll never be God. But I have learned that if I start the process of redemption earlier by clearly forgiving the little slights and thoughtlessnesses of others before they fester, it tends to preserve, and even heal, a lot more relationships.
When I was a kid, we used to put small rocks on the railroad tracks so we could see passing trains smash them to sand. (My friends and I were easily, if unusually, amused.) One day, a killjoy adult saw us and gave us a serious “talking to,” claiming we might derail a train some day. Now, I seriously doubted him, and doubt it now, but the message was clear. Why take the risk? There is just no point to flirting with what we may think is insignificant sin. First, there isn’t any, really. As important, the derailment it can cause is always harder to correct and redeem. Nothing is impossible for Christ, thank God, but we are already freed from sin through Him, and there’s just no good reason to go wading back into that cesspool.
No comments:
Post a Comment