Grabbing Hold of a Life Saver

Imagine you see someone fall in the water.  It’s quickly evident the person doesn’t know how to swim.  You throw them a life saver but they won’t grab hold.  It’s their choice.  You can’t make them reach out to grab hold of that which would bring them to safety and life.  You can only warn and encourage.  It’s the same in our spiritual world, whether we are giving needed instruction to a person who does not yet know Jesus personally, or whether it be to a Christian who is straying away from the ways of God. We can only warn and encourage, and this we must do out of our love for our struggling brothers and sisters.

I’m concerned, as many of you, for those who have tasted of God’s goodness, known the immeasurable joy of His comfort, but something happens — an attack by our arch enemy, Satan’s demonic forces.  They whisper that sin is pleasurable, that committing sin won’t matter once in a while — but sin always matters.

The Bible often uses the disease of leprosy to illustrate sin and what it does to us.  Leprosy damages a person’s sensory nerves.  In time those senses become numb.  Pain is not felt in fingers and toes; the lack of sensation grows into the arms and legs.  This happens to us spiritually when we leave sin unchecked.  We become calloused, hearts grow cold and unfeeling to the damage of sin.

Today there is effective treatment for leprosy, but if this disease is left without medical care, then the outcome is fatal.  It’s the same with a person who lacks repentance for their sin.  It leads to death; not a loss of salvation, but a loss of joy and peace that gives us comfort and strength to get through life’s trials.  It also dulls our senses, leading us away from the wisdom of God, taking us instead toward bad decision making.  This behavior hurts both ourselves and those we love who observe us as we choose ungodliness over God’s cleanliness.  

As leprosy worsens, it renders that a person be outcast.  The same happens spiritually. For a child of God to choose a path of sin, it leads them away from true heart fellowship with likeminded brothers and sisters.  Such a person desires other things and other people with whom to share their dark ways.  This path brings upon a person a growing self-loathing.  There is only one cure for such misery — true repentance. 

If this is you, do not delay.  Return to Jesus again.  Grab hold of joy and peace again.  Worship in awe and ecstasy again.  Truly repent, turning away in sorrow from sin, to life giving joy once more.  It’s Jesus.  Only Jesus.  There is no other life saver upon whom we may grab when we fall into sinful waters.

After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death (James 1:15).