I’m excited to be blogging again this week. Today’s Monday Ministry Helper is about dealing with our sin.

In the Sunday School class that I’m attending we are going through a book by Dr. James MacDonald called “10 Choices“. You can read more about it HERE.

Chapter two is about Choosing forgiveness and at first I thought that it would be more focused on how to forgive people that wronged you and how to let go of things that you are holding on to, but rather the whole chapter was focused on dealing with our sin.

He makes some profound statements, here is one of them:

“Sin is the cause of every planet problem. Volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, famine, and flooding in my basement – are all because of sin. Special news reports tell us that our weather systems are more whacked than ever before. It’s warmer at the poles and colder in the tropics. A flip-flop in weather conditions drenches Phoenix while Seattle dries up. Storms have become more frequent and intense but less predictable.

The universe itself is broken. The sun is burning out. Scientists tell us that the earth is turning slower every year. The solar system is winding down and getting worse because of sin. All the amazing evidence for God’s design that we saw in the last chapter is now tainted. Everywhere we look we see examples of the insidious damage caused by sin. The Bible tells us, ‘For the creation was subjected to futility’ (Romans 8:20a) and that it is in ‘bondage to corruption’ (Romans 8:21b). The universe doesn’t work as well as it used to.

And it’s getting worse. In the last fifteen years, we’ve experienced more earthquakes than in the last fifty years – and more in the last fifty years than in the last 500 years. The universe is wearing out under the weight of sin ( Hebrews 1:10-12).”

So how is this helping?

I’ve been realizing how sinful I am and we are. If we are going to be used of God, then we got to be making sure that we aren’t living a life of sin. Yes we will always fall short and struggle, but we need to be asking him for forgiveness and cleansing.

Let me tell you about an experience that happened to me in high school. I was attending a revival service with my youth group and I remember that I wasn’t really living for the Lord and the man that was speaking that evening gave an opportunity to come forward to repent and ask for God’s forgiveness publicly and so I remember going forward and what happened next was really amazing.

I remember sobbing and letting my burdens go and I started laughing. I think the reason I started laughing was because I hadn’t felt good for awhile and the difference was so amazing enough that I just couldn’t help but laugh with joy. And I want to say that I’m not a pentecostal or go to a charismatic church, but God healed me and I knew that I was forgiven – what a great thing!

When I do the give-a-ways from now on this site these will be for youth workers and leaders only, not everyone. I didn’t realize that it was going to get out so quickly about the free money to the paypal account although I must say it was cool to see it reaching out to others.

Keep up the good work serving students this week!

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