Not-so Random Thoughts on Sin

Hopefully within a week or so, you'll be able to go to our website and listen to some of the sermons preached at Grace. I was listening to last Sundays and first I noticed that my NC accent has really come out after moving back down here! I also hear what I left out. It was so hard for me not to burst out into "The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes & the Pride of Life" by the 77's during that message. It was running through my head and was a little distracting. I've been quoting lots of song lyrics lately and thought I'd give the congregation a break from hearing lyrics from obscure songs they've never heard of, although they are quite meaningful to me. But I'll post them here:

Well, I feel like I have to feel something good all of the time
With most of life I cannot deal, but a good feeling I can feel,
Even though it may not be real,
And if a person, place or thing can deliver, I will quiver with delight,
But will it last me for all my life, or just one more lonely night.
(chorus)
The lust, the flesh, the eyes and the pride of life
drain the life right out of me.

Well, I see something and I want it--Bam! Right now!
No questions asked.
Don't worry how much it costs me now or later:
I want it and I want it fast.
I'll go to any length--sacrifice all that I already have and all that I
might get
just to get something more that I don't need,
And Lord, please don't ask me what for.

And I love when folks look right at me and what I'm doing or have
done,
And lay it on about how groovy I am, and that I'm looking grand;
And every single word makes me think I'll live forever, never
knowing
that they probably won't remember what they said tomorrow.
Tomorrow I could be dead.
(by Mike Roe)

[Yep, the song is still relevant after all these years! It's over 20 years old, which means I'm getting old!]
But that little chorus is true: sin does drain the life right out of you. Me-centeredness leaves us impoverished. I felt this last week. I made some negative unnecessary comments to someone that encouraged a comaraderie of ill-will (a Bible study leader I know would call it an "alliance"). It didn't take me long after leaving the conversation to be convicted about what I had said. I was also convicted that maybe I had been harboring unforgiveness for a number of years, enough so that I had to write about it in the "Sad and Bad Book".
But even after confessing and repenting, I was still bothered. I have a mutual accountability partner who often beats herself up over her sin. I tell her that God does not want us to that, but here I was doing the same thing. In this case, what I had needed to do was to go beyond taking it to God back to the person with whom I had made the "alliance" and admit my fault to her. That solved the problem. It hasn't bothered me since. James 5:16 "Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed."
These are good and true words. They are the answer to having the life drained out of us!