Thinking a lot lately about how short life truly is.
News stories all the time tell us of deaths affecting the hearts of so many around the world. Cancer and sickness grips our world. A new saying has begun its circulation in the youth of our country: YOLO is screamed from the mouths of thirteen year olds all over the country to excuse themselves of idiotic, senseless behavior. If you aren’t aware of what YOLO means, it is an acronym for “you only live once.” It is a “freedom” from consequences, or at least that’s the idea behind it.
Sometimes, I look at the next generation and I think, “oh boy, America is destined to hell…”
Then reality slaps me in the face.
I use the YOLO excuse all the time. My sin seeps to every part of my being constantly. Sometimes, I sin so much I think the person next to me going up the elevator or passing me in the grocery store can see it on me like it is written across my forehead in big, black, bold sharpie.
I think that this constant chain attached to my legs and my arms and my neck can never come free.
Then I read the word ‘BUT’ in passages all across the New Testament. Ephesians 2, Titus 2, and so many more…
They all explain how I was dead in my sin, how sin entangles me, how death was once the definition of my future. They end the passage with the victory that Christ paid on the cross and his rising from the dead. He has power that I don’t have. Power to wipe away the shame and guilt that is written across my forehead for those in the elevator and in the grocery store to see. He had power to take the sin that destined me to hell and make me white as snow. I am forgiven. I have been freed to live a life no longer entangled by sin. To walk with Christ fully in awe of the sacrifice he gave to me.
Because even when I was dead in my trespasses and sins, he has made me ALIVE.
I have no power on my own to defeat sin and when I try, I continue to fail. But prayerfully, when I keep my eyes on Christ, I can continue to move farther and farther away from that sin and closer and closer to looking more like Christ.
Does anyone else feel the way I do? Drowning in sin? Or feeling so free in Christ? I’d love to hear your feedback. Hopefully, if anything, you realize after this post that you’re not alone.
Psalm 39:4 – 8
4 “O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!
5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
6 Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!
7 “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.
8 Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool!
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