Sin - Like A Cancer Grows

Many years ago, a friends husband had a discoloration appear on his back.  She told him to go to the doctor and have it checked out.  Like many men, he said it was no big deal and ignored it.  However, it continued to grow and worsen and my friend continued to try to convince him to go have it seen by their doctor.  Yet he resisted.  Finally, there came a day when he happened to see their doctor for another matter.  While he was there, he told the doctor about his wife nagging him about this "thing" on his back.  The doctor took one look and immediately knew it was a very serious melanoma and sent him to a specialist. Although treatment was administered, it was too late and my friend's husband died.  Perhaps the story would have ended differently if only he had agreed to seek medical attention at the first sign of trouble.  I believe that is what it happening in churches all over the world.  We notice something that is wrong but we do not want to deal with it and so it grows until something devastating happens.  Spiritually speaking we do not want to face the problem, undergo treatment to rectify the situation, or experience the pain that comes with healing.  So we sweep the issue under the rug and act as if nothing is wrong.  And yet we ask...where is the Holy Spirit?  Why is there no revival?  Why are our churches filled with superficial Christians?

The problem, as I see it, is that we don't want to acknowledge sin.  We are a society of people who want all the benefits of salvation without any of the responsibility that goes with it.  We need to stand for TRUTH.  It may not be politically correct, but truth is still truth.  God does not change and sin is still sin. And the truth about sin is that sin devastates and destroys if left unattended or ignored.  If we are truly a Christian, we must be "CHRIST-LIKE."  That is what being a Christian means.  We carry the name of Christ.  Therefore we should resemble Him.  He spoke truth and it was convicting.  If we never call sin "SIN", then why are we surprised when rarely anyone is convicted or responds to our Savior.  Where is the repentance, weeping and transformation?  We want to add Jesus to our life instead of surrendering our life to Him.  We are deceiving ourselves if we think that adding Jesus-talk to our vocabulary and going to church equals salvation.

I have heard it said that Americans are starving nutritionally and yet we are an obese nation.  It is because we are eating a lot of food that does not have any nutritional value.  We feel full and we think we are satisfied, yet our bodies are crying out for vitamins and minerals that help us function at full capacity.  We are a nation full of diseases caused by malnutrition.  Spiritually speaking, we are also starving.  We go to church and sing our worship songs and think we are being fed. But we need more meat of the Gospel.   It is rare to hear a pastor preach an expository sermon these days.  Many preach unoffensive, mamby pamby, feel good sermons which only include a token scripture. We are more interested in what we can get rather than how we can serve.  Our leaders have become more interested in numbers of a big church attendance than the souls of those filling our pews.  When was the last time you heard a sermon about sin and it's consequence of hell.  We are guilty of ignoring sin and politely sending people to hell because we do not want to offend anyone.  The Bible says that in the last days many will be offended.  Isn't that where we are now?  We remove the ten commandments from public view because we don't want to offend.    The truth is that we don't want to acknowledge our sin and the ten commandments remind us of how wicked we truly are.  We must stand strong for what the Word of God tells us.  And when it comes to offending - I would rather offend and see true conviction than ignore and let a loved one perish.  Never let your love for someone negate the hatred for their sin.