Everything God does is:
--Motivated by Love, since He IS Love
--Denominated by purpose, since He is
purposeful
Everything man should be about is:
--Repentance, since we are prone to
sin
--Praise, since we are created to
praise and worship, and we have a choice of whom we will praise and worship -
self, evil or good
Consider this. In any ball
game, your objective is to keep the ball under your team's control and to
score. In the ball game of life, which is quintessentially spiritual,
your opponent's objective is to get your ball, condemn you to yourself and
others; and run to God with it in order to accuse you.
Sin is like losing control of your
ball. It literally puts the "ball of your life" in the
opponent's play. If you are like me, your typical reaction to this is to
waste time and energy running after your opponent, dealing with the
circumstances he manipulates and triggers, trying to recapture control of your
ball. This strategy not only wastes time and energy. It wastes
faith and increases fear, which is exactly your opponent's objective.
Your opponent knows this: fear acted upon produces results, not those
hoped for, but the exact opposite. Have you learned this truth yet?
Now imagine this better strategy.
Repentance dissolves your ball in your opponent's hands! This leaves him relatively nothing with which to condemn you to yourself and
others, and absolutely nothing with
which to accuse you before God. Why relatively and absolutely? In the
face of sincere repentance (godly sorrow leads to reversal -- repentance), God
is sworn to forgive and may well relent in allowing the earned consequential
punishment for sin. Once forgiven, He considers the sin as no longer
existent -- an absolute fact your
accusatory opponent hates and cannot change! However, even with your
repentance and God's forgiveness, you and other people don't operate at such a
level of absoluteness. We all "remember when...." Like
you, I am guilty as charged. And with our remembrance, we (in)conveniently
dredge up someone's sins and use them to accuse and condemn even the forgiven
sinner. This we do both openly and mentally. Thus, your ability to
envision and act on God's forgiveness is directly relative to the extent to which you envision, dwell on and act upon
people's believed or outward accusation and condemnation of you for past,
repented sin. Read that again.
Faith in your repentance and God's
forgiveness produces continuous praise and worship to God, which is His highest
purpose. This places the 'ball of your life' back in your
hands. It also energizes and motivates your winning team, which
includes holy angels…
…to run with you and to score!
