First – I want to tell you how blessed I was to be reminded, during worship, of how deep and wide God’s love is for me. We sang a great song based on a passage out of Ephesians…
Ephesians 3:14-20
New Living Translation (NLT)14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. 21 Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
And after singing about being amazed by His love for us, we were reminded that it’s really GOD that sings over US!
Zephaniah 3:17
New International Version (NIV)17 The LORD your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Imagine! He rejoices over us with SINGING!
We could have called it a day with that! We could have gone home right then…but God had more words for us to hear on the topic of sin.
Again in Genesis 3 we explored the concept of SIN as a source of only PARTIAL fulfillment. We looked at the tree that was forbidden. It was given to Adam and Eve as a choice…a means for demonstrating their love for God. Yet, as we have been studying, they stepped out of bounds. They chose to eat from THAT tree — to fulfill what was put before them as a temptation by the serpent: the fulfillment of knowledge. However, what looked appealing to Eve (and Adam, who was with her when she ate the fruit) provided only partial fulfillment. It didn’t last.
What looks/tastes/feels good…
- …won’t satisfy
- …won’t last
- …but does it really?
As was suggested Sunday…these kinds of things (temptations/sins) have a substance similar to cotton candy. They might look and taste good…but leave you less that sated.
In light of sin being described as “out of form,” I ask myself: where (in my life) do I need to let God pull me back into form…to heal me…to fill me with more than cotton candy? How about you — is there an area in your life that needs to be cleared of “cotton candy?”
~ Paula
echoes from the silence 
Thx Paula. Good stuff & worthy of continued thought & meditation!
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Paula, I misread the words you placed in parenthesis:(temptations/sins). In my speed-reading mode, I read it as (temporary/sins). My mixed-up reading probably did me some good because I spent some time trying to picture a temporary sin. It’s a tough critter to nail down. Are sins ‘temporary’ because we have been forgiven? Or, do they stain us forever, because they are, after all, “sins?” Is a forgiven sin erased from our permanent record?
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Mike…good questions.
Like the blood on the hand of your Centurion, a sin can hang around a while. But Marcus had not yet come to a place of repentance. Once that happens and forgiveness is given, the stain is gone. Wiped from our record.
However, God is also just. He couldn’t allow sins to go unpunished. The stain that would be upon us is transferred to His Son. Jesus bore each and every sin upon Himself in order for our record to be clean.
So…for the forgiven: yes; temporary!
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Good answer.
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