Friday, October 28, 2011

Stop Sin From First Thought

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. -- Psalm 139:23-24

Where does sin start? No. I’m not talking about Adam and Eve and the apple and the serpent. In your life today, where does sin start? Beth Moore says it starts in your mind, then goes to your mouth and then comes the deed. She may be right.

Most times before we sin, we think about it. We consider what we want. We wonder how we can get it. We make excuses for ourselves. We let our imaginations run wild. We tell ourselves we just can’t help ourselves. And we do it all in our minds.

Then we start heading toward the sin. We lash out in anger. We flirt with someone we shouldn’t be flirting with. We spend money we don’t have. We lie about where we’ve been. We spend hours online with people we don’t know so we can avoid interacting with the people we do know. We tell ourselves it’s not a big deal. We laugh and pretend that everything is okay. We haven’t actually done anything yet.

And then we do. We cross a line. We live out our fantasies. We do something we shouldn’t do because we wanted to. We couldn’t help ourselves. No one will ever find out. No one will ever get hurt. Yeah, right.

Moore gives the example of David and Bathsheba. David wasn’t at war, like he should have been. He was restless and bored. He spotted a beautiful woman bathing and lusted after her in his mind. Then he sent people to find out who she was. Still, he wasn’t satisfied. So King David sent messengers to bring Bathsheba to him and he slept with her. The story might have ended there but, as we all know, it didn’t. She became pregnant and David eventually had her husband killed. So lust turned to an unplanned pregnancy and the murder of an innocent man. Sin has consequences.

Imagine how different our lives would be if we could stop sin while it was still a product of our minds. We could confess our sin to God, meditate on His word, and move on. No one else would get hurt because it would stay between us and God.

Ask God to search your heart and mind. Ask Him to tell you where your mind is leading you astray. Stop sin before it has a chance to wreck havoc and destroy lives.