Heavenly Father
I know that I have sinned against you
my sins have separated me from you
I am truly sorry
I now want to turn away from my past sinful life and turn to you for forgiveness
Please forgive me, and help me avoid sinning again
I believe that your son, Jesus Christ, died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead and is alive
He hears my prayer
I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward
Please send your Holy Spirit to help me obey You
and to do Your will for the rest of my life,
In Jesus' name I pray, Amen
Monday, November 24, 2008
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Sin (Summary)
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Hey guys... Haven't posted for a bit... Lots of stuff going on... OOopps... Sorry, Lord jesus... Anyway, I just came back from my youth camp... God did so much in my life man... Sooo sooo much..... Cool~~ I love Jesus! Woots! Ok... Anyway, back to the subject... Let's recap sin...
What is Sin? Sin is the wrong things you do that grieves the Holy Spirit and makes God sad. It hinders your relationship with God in two ways.
1. Hinders God's blessing from flowing
2. Drags us further away from God because of the lies of the devil
3. Stops us from reaching our full potential
No. 3 is a new one which i realised during the camp. So i'm gonna talk abit about it. No.3 and No.1 are abit linked actually. You see... When we sin and we don't obey God, the blessing don't flow through us.. Let's say you have an anger issue.. On a personal basis, maybe your full potential is to influence lots of people and make new friends. But because of anger, people stay away from you... Not cause they hate you or anything, maybe they're just afraid of you.. But then you feel that they hate you and don't want to be your friends(lies of the devil..). You become a more angry person and the cycle repeats until you're so thrown off you wanna commit suicide. Then alas, the devil has won. Don't let him win!!! The best way is to stay away from sin.. How??
1. Confess
2. Repent
3. Always be sensitive to the spirit
Ok. When you confess, its not just, "Hey God, I'm sorry. Forgive me of all my sin. Thank You God. Amen". I know. I used to do that. When we confess, we have to know one thing. Through what we did, we broke God's heart. The God who loves us soo soo much. The God who created you. The God who takes care of you and provides for you. The God who had you on His mind before He died. And the God who promised you an eternity in Heaven with Him for those who follow Him. Just imagine. You create something that can come alive. That thing does some wrong things and makes you very angry. Not only that, they want to go against you and try to kill you and get rid of you. What's the 1st thing you wanna do?? Get rid of that creation, right? How dare they, your puny creation, go against you! Might as well just get rid of them a create better ones! But what did God do? God not only did not destroy us(ok.. other than the Noah's ark period), but he sent His son to die for each and everyone of us... and even promised us that we can be with Him after death. Can you feel the amount of God's love? And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Then you do something that makes Him really sad. Do you just blatently tell God, "Aye.. Sorry ar.. Just forgive me of my sins k? I rushing la.. There's things i need to do... And i'm very tired.. Ok.. I'm done.. Amen"? No right? It's just not right. It's like Cain's suka suka anything will do offering. So when you come to God. Make sure you're sincere.Then repent. It's no use telling God "sorry" and doing it again. Then you might as well not apologise. And then be sensitive to the spirit. When you're tempted and the devil tries to pull you back into the sin. And you feel something telling you not to do it.. Then don't. Listen to some christian music or something. Submit to God. Resist the devil. And he will flee from you. Be wary and you won't fall into the devil's trap again. The post is getting a little too long. So i'm going to end off with a personal experience from youth camp.
During one of the last sessions of the camp, Simon encouraged us to fight off our giants. I had a giant. A sin that I committed quite frequently. Like I'm being trapped in a vicious cycle. I confessed and tried repenting. But I wasn't very sincere. I wanted to get out of the sin. But I alway's failed. Cause I had the intention to do it again. In the activity, we had to write that giant in a paper. I wrote it down. Then we had to walk up to the "cross" and paste it there. Like pinning that sin on the cross with Jesus there and allowing the sin to die with Jesus on the cross. God spoke to me during that time. As I was writing, I was just listening to God. He said "Before you go up there, wait, don't follow the crowd. Go only when you're sincere and you really really want to give up on that sin." I waited. And it really came down on me. I felt extremely guilty. I decided to cast that sin to God. Why? Because it broke God's heart. Everytime I did it, I could feel God cry. Just like Jesus wept when Lazurus died. I didn't want to do something that hurt him over and over again. So I walked up to the cross. In front of the cross was a long queue. Then God showed me an image of when He died on the cross. Its like he was telling me. "You think this queue is long? Imagine all the world queuing up and and casting all the sins upon me during that moment of time." As i walked up to the cross, I saw all of the sins of people pasted there. I saw in the image, the Holy son of God taking up all our sins, pinned down by not only the nails. But also the sins of the world. So much sin that His Father turned away. And there i was, adding to all the other sins. I realised the real true meaning of "God dying for our sins", I should rephrase that. God didn't die for our sins. God died BECAUSE of our sins. But God didn't blame me. Instead, God continued to love me and bless me. Providing for me. Sending me the Holy Spirit. And just loving me with no strings attached. I walk down the stage(the area where the cross was at) and immediately broke down and cry. Crying because I knew I broke God's heart. Crying because of God's immense love and forgiveness. Crying because someone so small, so insignificant and so sinful like me was being cherished by the creator of Heaven and Earth. The feeling is really indescribable. You have to feel it to understand. And just like that. I felt God taking away that guilt and shame of the sin. I felt totally relieved after crying. God had heal me and helped me turn away. Then we took down the sin from the "cross" and burnt it at the campfire. The sins in our lives burnt by the flaming spirit of God. I was healed.
"Thank you" isn't even enough to describe how thankful i am for Jesus. Because of Jesus's amazing love for us, we should love Him back too... Amen...
Firestorm thanked jesus at4:51 AM