Little Sins

By degrees men get familiar with sin

"the ear in which the cannon has been booming will not notice slight sounds"

"At first a little sin startles us, but soon we say is it not a little one? then there comes another larger and then another, until by degrees we begin to regard sin as but a little ill and then follows an unholy audacity we have not fallen into open sin, true we tripped a little but we stood upright in the main, we may have uttered one unholy word but as for the most of our conversation it has been consistent, so we palliate sin, we throw a cloak over it we call it by dainty names. Is it not a poison who knows its deadliness? Does not the tiny coral insect build a rock which wrecks a navy? Do not little strokes fell lofty oaks"

It can all start with a joke at the dinner table that may not have been all too offensive to ones ears, or a quick glance outside a window to notice the neighbors fine car. We are never far from coveting, envy or salacious desires.

"Is it not a little one?" Men, with their eyes well opened by divine grace, have seen a whole hell slumbering in the most minute sin. Gifted with a microscopic power, their eyes have seen a world of iniquity hidden in a single act, or thought, or imagination of sin; and hence they have avoided it with horror,— have passed by and would have nought to do with it.

   This is something that convicted me. It was always be degrees I have been desensitized
to the harmful affects of sin. A drink here, a quick glance of lust there, a prideful thought here, a judgement towards other people spoken then and there and before you realize it you are ensnared and conditioned to think and feel in a way that seems normal to a worldly mindset. Desires which once seemed so harmful are now natural. Critiquing other peoples behavior, instead of praying and building others up soon becomes the norm. I'm writing this to myself as much as anybody it is so easy as Christians to fall into the traps the devil lays for us. 

 I have noticed in my time working retail that Sunday is usually the day I receive the least amount of tips and notice the greatest degree of unhappiness in people. This fact has always puzzled and amazed me. 

My personal encounter with God

   Many people today: when they talk about God, they know alot about him like an outsider looking in and observing Him than having just been with Him, many times we are happy to hear from Moses. In society a Moses could be an actor or influential artists, because we wanna be with "Moses", take a selfie with him, rather than the God he represents, they can be connected to him directly.. Really know him. we can get so into people and not realize we can walk up that mountain ourself. You've got to go up that mountain, where you come into the presence of God.  There's something amazing when  you go up that mountain alone an its just you and God. 

Lets snap back 2,000 years real quickly: Oh, to see Jesus deeply moved and weeping outside Jerusalem's walls right before he was about to be crucified. To see the deep emotion and soul cleaving anguish in his tear filled eyes as he struggles to articulate his sincere sorrow for their hard unrepentant hearts..Just forget about the rules, the moral predicaments, the doxology, religious ideals, political debates surrounding world crises today and take a moment to reflect on Jesus deep emotion, knowing his impending belittlement and execution was at hand, weeping over their sins. Yet how many of those are within those walls right now, fortified, by physical securities: health, wealth, friends, education and a litany of other freedoms. 

Lets flash back to my personal journey of faith. I got out and biked today for the first time in months, the weather was hot yet somehow it didn't bother me, after biking 15 miles a day in the snow to get to work, spending the holidays: christmas and thanksgiving alone, isolated on the Palouse like a sad recluse; yeah that was a dark time in my life. The point of me saying this is not to garner self-pity, for I ask it from no one, I took risks and made mistakes, and I will own my mistakes. Ill fortune went against me no doubt, but the point I want to make is my spending that time alone, isolated in inclement weather, fighting to survive was time for deep soul searching. It built character and matured me a bit. I always said "I would work out the hardiness of my soul on the undulating hills of the Palouse". Little did I realize the extent of how much those prophetic words came true. One day I'll look back at Pullman and say "that was the best thing that happened to me" although a lot of the memories may not have been great, it taught me what was important in life. 

If somebody asked me to stand up in the front of a room and give a speech to inspire others to find their personal greatness I I would say something like this "Don't do like I did, let myself get sidetracked..Wasted the prime of my life pursuing relationships that weren't real. Is there nothing that will not one day pass? We must find what is not fortune in this world. There is no hiding place where trouble will not find you. The world lives by trickery, if you wanna succeed, you can't be too good, it's the little things in life that are worth focusing on, worth noting, worth cherishing, these are the only things the world can't take away.  From a financial and educational standpoint my time in Idaho would seem like colossal failure, Yet from a  spiritual a maturation standpoint it was great success. Your mentality is indeed everything. The times people took care of me and looked out for me is what I love to remember best. I've taken risks, Iv'e made mistakes, yet Iv'e also owned those mistakes. Life is tough. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Moaning and groaning won't secure your future. Neither will blaming Wall Street, the big bankers, corporate America, or the government, Growing up my parents taught me the same formula for success that you probably learned: Go to school, study hard, and get good grades so you can get a secure high paying job with benefits and your job will take care of you. But that's industrial age thinking and we're not in the industrial age anymore. Your jobs not going to take care of you, the government will not take care of you. Nobodies going to take care of you It's a new century and the rules have changes. If you want a solid future...YOU need to create it. Don't be distracted by modern day headlines there is always some idiotic buzz going on that tries to pull your attention away from the serious business of building your life. Whither its terrorism, recession or the latest election cycle scandals, its got nothing to do with what you need to be doing today to build your future. But what is your future? If it's this life alone then being a "christian" and "having faith" is a great mistake. I'm not trying to create arguments of persuasion to build a "better you" what I am saying however, from my own personal  experiences is that faith matters. And divine help matters.

Plato himself was quoted to say “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing" What Plato realized was the starting point we must all arrive at. Is this not the beginning of wisdom? Even Paul himself agreed to the hidden truth of godliness being a mystery as to a riddle needing to be solved. Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great: The great eternal riddle..the mystery of the ages.

We must "sort out the madness" so to speak. that is our goal, in order to take hold of our eternal destiny by seeing what is real life. Those who desire riches and $ in the next life will sell all they have here in order to "gain" if we really lived eternally and saw death as a mere transition to a higher form of life with greater cognitive reasoning skills and a physical apparatus with built-in abilities to ascertain greater heights of pleasure, we'd be doing alot more to live for that existence and not give it all away to the current biological freak show of surface level materialistic decay around us. 

For life is a fickle thing. It seems life brings us more loss than success, more pain than gain and yet, in spite of all that: we fight tooth and nail to hang on 'despite the hardships' to life for just another 5 minutes. Whatever the pain that attends life, we desire to keep experiencing it. Because the other side is shrouded in mystique we've never experienced, we would rather bear the ills we have, than embrace the uncertainty of the unknown. He then says "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all" -Plato 

Author and film maker, Trey Smith greatly influenced my current thinking, if you havent heard of him watch his Youtube documentaries. Entities  a no-nonsense account about the machinery behind our current world...... and this exclusionary thing we call reality coupled the current level of deception, of evil ones harvesting the souls of those creatures (humans) and the matrix --the machine---

As was once stated:

 "I once dreamed of a world unhindered by machines..."

That world exists..just not in this dimension.."

The machinary are the demons behind the scenes manipulating the structures surrounding us..they follow their leader Satan and their aim is your perdition, we all have them, vile enemies of the soul...But they fight a losing war like the CSA after Gettysburg, Calvary was their "Waterloo" or "High Water Mark" of the rebellion..

I've felt like an ant with 6 legs, stumbling and struggling with a heavy load six times heavier than my body weight. Such an ant was found in the book "Till We Have Faces" in Oruals vision. To make a picture of the pieces, you have to be a right piece in order to connect where God wants to connect you, for we were all eternal beings, life does not end anywhere, death is merely a transition unto that which is real life, a higher form of pleasure, for we were designed friends, to co-author eternity with the most high.

If we are transformed into a new likeness, one like Jesus, then our desires will change as well; a propensity to sin will be completely removed with a fervent desire for good works. Can you imagine a world where joy will be unending? Pain and selfish ambition done away with, forever and ever, where restrictions are removed since our new nature and appreciation for God will be transformed. Free-will was and always will be there but due to the understanding of the depravity of sin that we are experiencing in this world, and that understanding is all in order that we may appreciate Christ that much more in the next, when the struggle will be ended. We will not be robots forced to obey his will but newborn saints filled with deep appreciation and awe for what our Savior has done for us. Without the cross, we could never understand the fullness of Jesus love for us. Measures of restraint will be removed.

For what is the Law? "It was added because of transgressions, and how would we know what it was to covet, or to lust, or to steal without the law?  This is what Paul is stating in the New Testament. Now that the fullness of all our transgression are removed through the power of the cross we can "respond" to others in gratitude.

I used to think Jesus and the cross was an old story that happened 2,000 years ago, about a man "Jesus" who did alto of good things, made some bold claims and was crucified. But now I see a clearer picture as my relationship with him grows. I see the cross and its power as ongoing, following his saints throughout history with every drop of blood covering future transgressions, even those we have yet to commit. It is not just some story in history, or some ethereal experience. What happened on that cross 2,000 years ago still follows us today, and the blood of Christ is continually pleaded over our sins by the intercession of our Savior as I type these very words....kind of changes your perspective a bit when you get to know Jesus in this way.