“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23
There’s a couple of things you ought to know. First, the devil is not your friend…ever. No matter what he says, no matter what he promises. Someone once said the only constant in this world is change. Check. And that is true in the physical world but in the spiritual world there are two constants–God is good and Satan is a liar. The second thing you ought to know is that sin is always a bad deal. No matter how good it sounds or how good it feels…it is a bad deal. Let me illustrate that for you.
So imagine you get your credit card bill in the mail. Imagine you had several large purchases that month. Even though you try and pay it off every single month…well this one is a little more than you can handle. Let’s say the bill is for $5,500.00. So as you are pondering what to do, you notice that the nice credit card people have a plan “B.” They say, “Instead of paying the card off (the very smart thing to do) you can make a minimum payment–just $113.00 a month. Wow…that would sure help…right? Wrong. You see, if you make just that minimum payment, it would take you…and get ready…seventeen years to pay the debt and with interest instead of paying $5,500, you would pay $15,515.00. What? Can that be right? Well it not only can be…it is. You see, the nice credit card company is going to charge you a whole lot of interest to use their money.
That nice credit card company isn’t so nice when you have to make payments and trust me they never were your friend to start with. Now Judy and I have two credit cards–we use one for gas (which pays us 5% for every dollar we spend) and the other credits us with travel miles for Delta. Both are paid in full each month and by the way when we can’t pay them off–out come the scissors.
So what is the point of this little financial lesson. It is all about sin. You see, like the debt became bigger and bigger because of interest so sin grows bigger and bigger. The old song says that sin will take you further than you want to go, make you pay more that you want to pay and stay longer than you want to stay. No matter how enticing sin seems–remember there is always a payment due and it can be big…real big.
God made a way through faith in His Son Jesus whereby our sins can be paid in full–forgiven. But the fact is we will still sin in this imperfect world and while God removes the penalty of that sin–the consequences–the interest if you will–remains. Satan will surely lie to you and try to convince you that a little sin never hurt anyone. Really? Well, once again remember that little sin nailed Jesus to the cross.
Be wise friend–both with your finances and with your sin. The bondage of debt and the guilt and shame of sin are two masters you don’t need. Don’t walk–run away–run to your Dearest Daddy who loved you too much to leave you in your sin and loves you too much to face that hot mess alone. He is waiting to help. Gratefully and always, He’s got this. Bro. Dewayne
Grits with Grace 