This week my family is celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It is a time to rejoice, since our Coming King has won the battle against sin, once and for all. This is what the gospel is all about!
While we haven’t ridden our home of all yeast products this week as some do, I think doing so is a wonderful illustration as to how we are called to rid sin from our lives and be holy as He is holy. Scripturally, leaven is equated to sin, and it has no place in us as believers.
I’ve contemplated sin this week, and what strongholds it still has in my life. Thankfully the Lord has helped me to overcome many things, but I still struggle with envy from time to time. Bitterness has been known to creep in. I’ve realized that many times my struggles are linked directly to behaviors and choices I made when I wasn’t walking closely with the Father.
Thank goodness for forgiveness and mercy. At the same time, it can be quite the hard pill to swallow once you realize that many of the problems in your life would be non-existent if you would have been walking closely with the Lord in the first place.
The battle with sin can be, and has been, overcome. This is good news! And yet if I could speak to my teenage self, I would tell her to just separate from the world and follow Him!
Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
James 1:27
Related: We are Being Called to Repentance
This can feel so difficult in our flesh, but the peace and joy that follows is unspeakably good. When we realize this, how easy the choice is to make.
I think this might be even more difficult for the current generation of young people. They hold the world in their hand in the form of a phone, wooing them to make choices contrary to the Father’s will for them.
His call to holiness can sometimes be difficult to grasp. When He said that He wants us to be set apart, that’s what He meant. I’ve learned it means to talk differently, dress differently, and even eat differently. Much of modern Christianity blends so closely with the culture that you cannot even see it. There is so much confusion in what living a life for God, and denying self, means.
I would love to encourage everyone, both young and old, to follow Him with abandon. Don’t be afraid of being considered “radical”. Don’t worry about fitting in. This world and culture is a wicked place, and God’s children should not blend with it.
This week I’ve thanked the Lord for giving us His Word, and have asked for His help to identify sin in my life and home to get rid of it.
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2
I hope you are encouraged to follow the Lord today. Sometimes I worry about sharing spiritual things on my blog since I feel unworthy to do so. I am far from perfect. But here I am anyhow…I so hope you understand how deep the Father’s love for you is, and decide to follow Him with your whole heart.
If you would like a free copy of the Bible, please send your mailing address to me at randncrone@gmail.com and I will send one your way shortly.
