Sin’s deceitfulness. Have you been deceived?

Sin’s deceitfulness. Have you been deceived?

Hebrews 3:13-14

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”

Has your sin taken you much further than you wanted to go? Speaking from personal experience, it has me…I wanted only to go to the next town and it took me across country.  But that is the goal of Satan; to distract with something that appears to be beautiful, sweet, no harm ect. He is like the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood.; dressed to impress but wants to devour you once you have entered the home. Some sins have greater consequences than others and will cost you so much more than you want to pay…the problem is this, once the sin is committed we usually have a problem taking responsibility for our actions. Then when our life spirals out of control because of our choices, we get bitter instead of better. The longer you stay on the path of bitterness, the more work it is going to take to straighten out your life.

Let me give you some example of what I mean. A girl goes out drinking, clubbing, like most people do nowadays; she has a little too much to drink and goes home with a man and sleeps with him. A few weeks later she finds out she is pregnant and the man wants nothing to do with her or the child. She has an abortion and soon experiences an insurmountable amount of guilt and shame. She then goes into a deep depression and never fulfills the dreams she once had for herself.

Extreme but does happen; see how one sin…drinking alcohol, led to another sin- premarital sex, then led to murder of a baby, then onto guilt and shame.

But here is best part- no matter how far down the path of bitterness or shame you have gone, Jesus is right there waiting for you to grab His hand to take you down a path of righteousness. Trust me, I have been down the “valley of the shadow of death”, I blamed God for my circumstances, but He forgave me of my sins, restored my life! He is the blessed redeemer!

I don’t know what people know about the Bible, but it is not full of stories of men and women who were perfect people, who lived perfect lives, but were sinners, who God restored; because they made a choice to follow Jesus.  The Devil is deceptive and conniving, he wants to see you fail and suffer; Jesus wants you to love Him; prosper, and smile. Jesus loves you dearly; you truly are precious in His sight. I love what Beth Moore said; there is not a moment where you can say to God, “I love you” where He hasn’t already said, “I love you” first. He is the God of love. Don’t be deceived by sin, if you have, I pray you recognize the sin and turn from it. An easy way to recognize sin is this; stay in God’s Word and in prayer with Him. The more you do, the easier you will recognize the Devil’s schemes. He’s sneaky, that is why you pray the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead me out of temptation and deliver me from the evil one.” To the ones who don’t know Jesus and have never accepted Him as their personal Savior, I ask; what do you have to lose by trusting in Him? Life is hard; don’t make it more difficult by going through it alone. Besides no one will ever love you more than the One who came to die specifically for you!

And one last note; Christians be on guard. We are going to sin, but as a Christian, remember who you are representing; Jesus Christ, the Majestic Savior. Hebrews 6:6 says we crucify Christ over and over and subject Him to public disgrace when we sin and claim to be a child of God. He forgives us when we sin, but be on guard precious ones and let's encourage others to come to know Jesus. Remember believers need encouragement too; let's be there for each other.  

(This image was done by my brother)