HOW SIN AFFECTS US AND HOW JESUS FIXES OUR SIN
When sin entered into the world it affected everything. Because of sin we now are out of place with God. This is what it means to be alienated. We don’t know how to love Him and we are not sure He loves us. In addition to being alienated from God we are alienated with ourselves. Sin causes depression, anxiety anger and identity issues. Sin has also disconnected us from each other, causing social alienation, we have a hard time loving people. Because of this, there is war, crime, social injustice and oppression. Lasty sin has affected our relationship with nature. Sin has literally messed up nature and our relationship with it. Because of sin, nature is off balance, there are famines, natural disasters, and disease. The black hole of sin consumes and messes up all that should be good in the world.
REALITY CHECK
The reality is, most of the world, christian or not, knows we have a problem with the last two issues. We know we are out of place with each other and with nature. However, our world tries to fix our problems, including psychological alienation, without ever dealing with the center of the problem…the black hole of sin! Unless we deal with sin, and our spiritual alienation with God, we will be hopeless to deal with the rest of our worlds problems! This is a fact…you don’t deal with sin and everything else will be tainted and troubled no matter how hard you work to fix it.
IRRESISTIBLE GRACE
So how do we deal with the black circle of sin? The only solution is to have Jesus turn that black circle of sin white! To have Jesus make the sinner a saint! How does this happen you ask? Only through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the only way man can see that sin, and not some other issue, is the root of our problems. 1John 3:16 says By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. By looking to Jesus, who laid down His life for us in love He can fix our sin. When the Holy Spirit has shown us the reality of Jesus, He at the same moment, pours His irresistible grace upon us! This literally means that once the Holy Spirit shows us that Jesus, free of merit forgives sinners, we can no longer resist Him, we will worship Him! In spite of us Jesus will draw us to Himself in grace, love, mercy and forgiveness!
OUR PRAYER
With all this in mind, our prayer as a missional minded church is to pray for this irresistible grace to fall on more sinners. We should pray that Jesus will pour His spirit upon our town, that sinning men and women would know His love, that they would not be able to resist Him, but turn to worship and glorify Jesus with their lives. Lets pray Jesus will build His church, that He will do as He promised and draw sinners to Himself that they may be made as white as snow!