Greetings to you in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ – THE Risen Saviour! Another ‘damp’ fine morning in the Kingdom to prepare us for a weekend of surprises. I trust that you have a good week … and I pray that you are excited and expectant as you consider all that you want to do, people you want to see, and places you want to go. This is ‘low Sunday’, so we want to begin praying for a manifestation of God’s miraculous presence in our worship gatherings. Today I will be praying for you, asking Father to give you health and strength and a happy heart and a renewed mind.
God gave me a few words from an old hymn to ponder…and I am going to pass them to you so that we can be ‘meditating’ together. Here are the words: He breaks the power of cancelled sin – He sets the prisoner free – His blood can make the foulest clean – His blood avails for me – Charles Wesley. Now let me give you these words from the Bible: “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles … let us fix our eyes on Jesus…” Hebrews 12:1b, 2a . I am suggesting to you, since I have been pondering this for a day or two, that the ‘cancelled sin’ from the song is related to the ‘everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles’ from the verse.
I am thinking that though sin can be forgiven, it is hard to cancel…forget. As such we get entangled and hindered by something that God has dealt with. I suppose we could say the sin is cancelled but not conquered. I have had many a conversation with someone who said that although they have asked for forgiveness for themselves or have forgiven someone else’s towards them, that they can forgive the act but it is the person that is the challenge, be it themselves or another person.
I have come across a simple four imperative response from a devotion: Hate it – we sometimes carry the sin with us so much that we become comfortable with it being there and actually come to like it ; Starve it – stop rehashing and rehearsing, exercise the diet of the mind and stop talking as if it were still a part of your life ; Corner it – don’t let it control you, get proper sleep, exercise, diet, get involved with others and don’t isolate, tend to your emotions; Overwhelm it – read God’s word, claim his promises…find a promise that counterattacks, sing praises to God, seek the infilling of the Holy Spirit, soak your thoughts in the love of God and what He has done-is doing-and will do.
I am still thinking this through…and I pray that you’ll – first, read or sing the verse, read the scripture passage, and then let it ‘sit’ in your mind for a time. You never know what God wants to say to you.
Have a great weekend…be blessed!