STAGE DIVE!

I went to bed last night determined that today I would blog about something other than sin. However, I opened up The Word and started reading Romans 6. This morning I read it again and it dawned on me...preachers (that preach The Word, not pieces of it) must struggle to preach on something other than sin.
When you read The Word, our condition of sin and God's view and response to it is EVERYWHERE! So, for a preacher or teacher to spend 90% of their time discussing sin seems to be the logical thing to do. After all, if our relationship with sin hasn't changed, our relationship with God has not changed either. By that I mean; we are, by nature, children of Wrath. By nature WE LOVE SIN! Until we surrender to Christ and He transforms us we will continue to love sin. In our sinful nature we love gossip, slander, profanity, blasphemy, fornication, pornography, lust, masturbation, and other sexual impurity. We love to hold on to bitterness, anger, rage, malice and hate. We love to get drunk, covet and our greed consumes us. We will put anything and everything before God.
Take a look at Romans 6 and read the different descriptions of our relationship to sin. We are slaves to it, it reigns in our life, it is our master, we are instruments of wickedness....all this in one small section of one short chapter. Does this describe you?....I know it used to describe me! How do we become “dead to sin” as Paul talks about? Answer: Surrender!
Let me give one quick illustration of surrender. Much to my wife's horror, when my kids were small enough I would always holler “STAGE DIVE” when they were at the top of the stairs. With my wife yelling, “NO”....the kids would jump off the top step and in to my arms. They had no thought that dad couldn't or wouldn't catch them. Then as they got older, they quit trusting that dad 'could' catch them. As much as I 'would' catch them, they doubted whether I 'could'. In other words, they were not willing to surrender the firm footing of the carpet and make a leap of faith. This is kind of like our relationship with sin and this world. We are either too in love with the things of this world to leave our firm footing in it, or we do not think God could or would transform us if we make the leap of faith.
God promises a new heart with new desires when you surrender to Him; however, He does want your surrender. If you are still a slave to sin and you secretly or openly love it....you are still under God's Wrath. If you are a slave to sin, but do not want to be, God can and will transform you. Imagine the things of this world that you love becoming a foul taste to you, and the things of God bringing you more joy than you thought possible when you were living for this world....that's what happens. The joy of serving Him is not a struggle, it is a joy that surpasses all understanding. Give Him your surrender today, we are not guaranteed tomorrow.
Link to Romans 6