¹¹Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

Loopholes and Lose ends

I am reminded of a story about a little girl whose day was not quite going as planned. So she tried arguing, then pouting and finally crying but to no avail. Her mother reminded her of the verse she had been memorizing “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” The little girl without hesitation pointed out to her mother that verse did not say she would not sin, only that she might not sin. That kind of reveals our own motives as we take God’s word into our hearts; we seek Loopholes and Loose ends to justify our trying to make God’s word fit our needs. We pick a verse here a verse there, lift a passage out of context and make it fit our situation so as to justify our basic sinfulness. We don’t like being told what to do, we like making our own decisions even if it is wrong. God’s word is to be taken literally unless it clearly teaches otherwise. We do not benefit from misappropriating God’s word to fit our desire, our belief or our desired way of life. Working our lives with Loopholes and Lose ends only proves that our heart is not in tune with God. God does not make exceptions for sin on any level and neither should we; we are to model our lives after the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Part of Jesus’ ministry here on earth was to prove that man can live a justified life, but only if we are totally and completely sold out to God. We cannot even come close to achieving that desired result if we are always looking for Loopholes and Lose ends. Lets look at few ways to avoid Loopholes and Lose Ends.

1) Take God at his Word- we either believe the Whole Bible or none of it. The Bible is either fully true or completely false; there is no middle ground. If we accept it as God’s fully inspired and ordained word to mankind then we cannot pick and chose to accept parts of it and disavow the rest. God’s word is quick and powerful and sharper than a two edged sword (Hebrews 4:12) it will cut which means it will hurt. The main reason it will cut and hurt is because it will be pointing out a weakness in our living that is not acceptable to God. We will not like the rebuke so our reaction will be to disregard it and act as if it was never written. Whether it cuts and hurts or encourages and uplifts we have to accept it as it is. We need to Take God at his Word-PERIOD-.

2) Take God and his Son- without being fully indwelt by God’s spirit we will never come close to measuring up. It is our natural desire (because of sin) to find Loopholes and Lose Ends because we do not want to accept a God who refuses us. However what we need to remember is that God accepts us the person just not the sin. Therein lies the problem, the sin is intertwined with the person and only we as individuals can separate the two. Our ability to separate the two only goes as far as the decision or willingness to separate the two. Jesus alone can finish the process with no assistance from us, in fact our attempt is not acceptable. Jesus said he is the only way (John 14:6) and that is coupled with Ephesians 2:8,9 which states we can do nothing of our own to merit eternal life. Jesus however does not simply grant it to everybody at whim, we must desire the Son and God, we must desire a forgiven life, desire a relationship with God and with his Son. Simply put we must Take God and his Son.

3) Take God and not The World – make no mistake, this world has plenty to offer, the Bible itself teaches that there is pleasure in sin (Hebrews 11:25) for a season. The pleasure only lasts for a short time, but there is pleasure. We therefore have a decision to make, to enjoy the pleasure, which lasts but a short time, or do we choose God and his Son Jesus. We cannot serve both. If we want to avoid Loopholes and Lose Ends we have to choose whom we will serve. Joshua in 24:15 posed the same question to the children of Israel and Joshua himself chose serving the Lord. This world has plenty of distractions and there are a lot of us Christians who are tea-totally enamored by the pursuit of worldly living and as a consequence not much work for God, not many souls getting saved by the working of us worldly Christians. We need to choose which direction we want to go, which God we want to serve. And we need to remember that there are consequences for our decisions, and the consequences are not always pleasant, nor should they be. The world belongs to the devil and when we choose the world or any of its vices we are giving credence to Satan, we are empowering him further and we are short circuiting our relationship with God, short circuiting our testimony before a lost and dying world and short circuiting any effectiveness we could have for the cause of Christ and the people of God. So choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord even as Joshua chose serving the Lord.