QUOTE (Dan @ May 1 2009, 06:01 PM)
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Hi,It is my understanding that God detests all sin and that one sin is not necessarily worse than another because they are all bad.I also understand that Christians will ultimately be forgiven for all sin because Jesus paid the price for our sins.QUOTE
However... while we are still here, living on earth, it seems to me that there is in fact a price paid for our sins and some prices are higher than others. What I mean to say is, although we may not be held accountable for our sins when we leave this world... while we are still here there does seem to be a price we pay in human suffering for our sins and that depending on the severity of the sin our suffering can be greater or less.
Dan, that was a very good statement...and you are right. What most Christiansdon't understand and I didn't understand for over 30 yrs was my sins were coveredby the Blood of the Lamb and @ that point, I had a different relationship with theDivine Law. I became a Son of God but I still wasn't perfect...so God chastises meto correct me but @ times I think He is unjust.We are going through a purifing fire and learning obedience through the things wesuffer. Before I knew Christ...I could sin and not feel guilty, but now when I sin, Ifeel terrible. The difference now is I am benefitting by allowing God to correct me,where as before...I was wondering why bad things would happen to me and I was not getting any spiritual gain from the experience.God is looking for a people who acknowledge their shortcomings. Who are not afraid to admit when they have fallen short and are in need of God's understanding and love. We often hear that we need to confess our sins. I think this is where some confusion develops. Most are taught that true confession means to repent of your sins and to turn away from your sin. That you would ask for forgiveness and never commit that sin again. While I wish that was true for myself, I understand that many times I confess to God about a sin, and return to do that sin anyway. This is true of most, if not all of us. While we may be truly sorry for what we have done, it is hard to overcome some of these sins in our life. We feel overwhelmed by them and fear that they are too ingrained for us to overcome. This is why they are referred to as strongholds. But even God tells us that we can overcome strongholds. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5:
3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Notice that the key to defeating these strongholds is the use of divine power. In other words you must be connected with God to be able to beat them; to be able to tear them down. Without God you are virtually helpless and will not win. But I am a little ahead of myself. Before I continue on that tract, let's understand what confession is. The most accurate definition of confession is to be saying the same thing that God is saying. God knows you have sinned and all the sins you have committed. When you confess you are stating the same thing that He is. But there is also one more major part to confession that needs to be added. That being that as part of saying what God is saying that you agree that what He says about your sin is correct. In other words, it is acknowledging that you should not be committing those sins. Not that you completely stop doing them but instead that you acknowledge that they are wrong and never justifiable.This is where people get a little overzealous in their understanding. While I agree for the most part that it is a turning away from sin, the turning away is not as much in the physical as it is in the mind. It is not that you stop ever committing that sin; it is that you agree that the sin is wrong and seek God's help in overcoming the sin. Confession is then the admission of our wrongs and the acknowledgement that we should no longer do them. When we have sin in our lives and we do not offer our confessions about it then it leads to having a stronghold. We become overwhelmed by the sin, and do not feel that we can ever remove it. This stronghold afflicts us, and because we are not confessing it, we are keeping ourselves from God, and thus in our affliction we are evil. To be frank with you, sins remain sins in our lives because of secrecy. When we confess things in the open to God they no longer have the same control over us. Strongholds are dark places where we hide our transgressions hoping no one will notice them, especially the Father. We then try to further hide them by putting on a fig leaf and asking God to look at this. All this does is make our sin more ingrained and make us unable to overcome those strongholds.To beat them we must stand before God and say what He is saying, think as He is thinking, and invite His Spirit to demolish strongholds in our lives. If we do this, evil will not be at our doors. Logabe For example, you lie when you say that your mother looks wonderful. Or you stub your toe and use the Lord's name in vain. Compare those with a guy and a girl who live together for years in open sin and the immense pain and suffering that happens when things do not work out and they break up.Thanks for your comments,~Dan