Thursday, June 13, 2013

How Bad Does It Stink?

Acts 8:3
3As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every home, and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison.
Saul was the man who stood in agreement with the stoning of Stephen the Deacon who was wrongly persecuted and turned over to the high priest by those in the church with jealous spirits. But an intervention by Christ changed all of it and then Saul became Paul, one of the greatest Apostles of the early church. The behavior he once engaged in he later disapproved  for himself as a man in Christ and from time to time referred to himself as one not worthy but grateful for the love of Christ. We are like Paul in that we have had some terrible habits and ways but an intervention with Christ brought us out. And once we saw how ugly those things were, we no longer wanted them for ourselves.
A natural example. My neighbor has been a smoker for 20+yrs. I hadn't seen her out on the porch lately. We spoke the other day and turns out she quit smoking 5months ago. She never smoked in the house because her son has asthma. But the neighbors on the other side of her still smoke and she can smell it when her windows are open. She said, "I didn't know how much cigarette smoke stinks until I quit. It smells awful." (This is not to pick on smokers but just to illustrate). My neighbor had no idea how bad her habit smelled until she was no longer in it. And she did it for more than 20years. In the spiritual this act is a modest example of deliverance which means to be freed from, brought out, to come out of the something.
We are all continued works in progress as our faith will not be complete until the day Christ returns. So is it time for another intervention with Christ in your life? Are there some bad habits and ways that Christ is about to interrupt and reveal to you just how much they stink?

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