The soft breeze blows gently through the hair of the small boy. His feet are muddy, and his clothes rustled from playing with his friends through the fields, chasing goats, and climbing trees that day. Usually he would have work to do, but that day he and his friends were allowed the day to play. With not a cloud in the sky, it had been a picture-perfect day. Nearing late afternoon, reluctantly, the boys part their ways to their homes. Taking the well traveled road home, the boy wonders what his mother has prepared for dinner. He was well worn out and very hungry. The sun just begins to set as he nears home. Atop a hill, he can see his house in the distance. But what is that he sees? He views a crowd, a mob, around his home; chaos at it’s finest. The cries for help, and screaming of his younger sister send him running toward the house. He pushed his way through the crowd, desperately searching for his family. When he was jolted by a jerk of his arm and roughly thrown into the midst of the crowd. Fearfully, he runs into the arms of his mother. Everything they owned, all their possessions, were thrown onto the dusty ground around them. Surrounding thus, a fierce and angry crowd. So afraid and confused, he can barely process what is going on around him. He manages to turn to his father. “Father, what is going on?”, he asks. The father looks down into the tearful eyes of his young son and replies, “Son, I’m sorry. I’ve sinned. I’ve sinned against Jehovah, God. Because of my sin, we all must die.”
The first stones are then thrown at the little boy and his family, after then, their bodies and possesions burned. Can you imagine what this little boy felt? His father, the man he looked up to and trusted, denied everything he had taught the boy, and in turn brought death to the entire family. Tuesday morning, we were preached to about Achan and his choices. Achan hid his sin. He took the items he stole and hid them in his tent. (BTW, a lot of good they did for him.) We may think we have hidden our sin, and noone will find out, but someone always knows. Noone with skin found out Achan’s sin, but God already saw and knew. You can’t do anything He doesn’t know about. Achan’s sin affected other people, obviously; as does our own. There is no sin that does not affect other people. You may say, “It’s only hurting myself. No one else will be affected by it. It won’t hurt anyone else.” Lie. It always does. Always. It affects your family. Your friends. Your church family. Sin always hurts your relationship with God, and in turn, will affect everyone you do, or should have, contact with in your life. Don’t believe me? Imagine this.... A young girl has a wrong relationship with a guy, and through it has an illigitament child. Now, that sin has now affected multitudes of people including her family, the ‘father’ of the child, the child, what was to be her future husband, family, and relationships, her friends, church, pastor, and everyone who knows her, her influencees, and those she was to reach that now she is unable to. All that becuase of one moment that ‘would only hurt her, and noone would ever know’. Now consider this; that music, those friends, whatever it may be; that sin that is hindering your walk with the Lord. It is then showing itself, whether you realize it or not, in all other areas of your life. That sin, is affecting everyone around you. There may be someone you are supposed to witness to or have a possitive influence on, and you are unable to because of that sin in your life. Or that person you are supposed to reach, someday will be a great Christian and reach countless people to Christ, and then think of all those they will reach. But, what if you don’t tell that one about Christ? Think off all those lives you have just had an affect on for the worse.... and you think it’s only hurting yourself? I cringe at the thought of how many people I have resisted the urge to talk to about the Lord. What if I were the one who was to bring them to the Lord, and I didn’t do it. How horrible it would be to see them being sent to hell, knowing I could have prevented that; I could have saved them. Our choices in life affect way more people than I think we realize, our influence is more powerful than we think, and the concequences of our sin affect more people than we will ever know. Again, don’t ever think your life doesn’t affect other people, or what you do doesn’t affect them. It is not true. Each person I have ever come into contact with has affected my life in some way or another. Everyone has taught me something. For example, my youth pastor has taught me not to run on ice. I watch other’s lives. Some of the most encouraging and discouraging times are when you watch someones life. People ARE watching you, whether you think they are or not. (I do.) There are people looking up to you. there are people who copy everything you do. There are one’s that I have thought the world of, and then they let me down. I don’t want to be that kind of person for others. Everyone is an example of something. We are to be an example of the believers. “Noone is completely useless, they can always serve as a bad example.” I want to be a good example for those following me. Our whole existance is to live for Christ. At times, I fail miserably. But, in the end, it will all be worth it. I don’t regret what I did for Him, rather what I didn’t do. Our choices make a change.... Choose to make a change for the better.
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Lizzy parkerMarriage.
Motherhood. Ministry. Missions. Archives
January 2023
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