This article is from a dear sister, Stephanie Bys, who is a missionary in one of the poorest regions of the world. She and her husband and children gave up their careers, sold their possessions and moved to help teach and care for the poorest of the poor. They have faced opposition from so called ‘christians’, been arrested, subjected themselves to disease, and yet continue to take in more and more children. Listen to her urgent plea to flee from the dangerous theology and thinking of modern life and social engagement.
You can learn more about the Bys family: Facebook / About-Face Missions
Ladies, there is a movement making its way through the church, and even though I’m not in the states, I see it all over Facebook. I want to take some time and share some things with you. I haven’t read the book that I see many friends reading and posting about, so I won’t address that at all. But I do want to address in general the trivialization of sin.
Instead of this coming off as judgmental, I hope that you can hear my heart. I hope you can see that by sharing my thoughts I’m challenging this thought process which is so pushed today. Of course not one of us is perfect, in fact I struggle with my mouth, anger, holding on to things longer than I should etc. pretty much daily. However, you won’t find me celebrating or making light of that ever. Instead, what we should all be doing (ME especially) is putting those sins at the feet of Jesus, apologizing for them and try to stop repeating them. Try to be more like Him, not act as if our sins are no big deal because we do in fact love Jesus.
By minimizing our sin we are acting as if the death of Jesus was no big deal, like he died for something trivial. This isn’t about judging the person wearing the shirt or posting the meme or about the one thinking their sin is not that bad. This is about the trivialization of what sent Jesus to the cross. Think about that for a few minutes…Satan would love nothing more than to have a bunch of God’s people walking around and living a life full of sin thinking that it really isn’t a big deal because they love Jesus! Yes, LOVE Jesus, make mistakes, but please don’t ever downplay that our sin sent him to the cross.
Several years ago you might have seen me posting those kinds of memes. I certainly can identify with some of those. Just today I saw a meme that said “I’m somewhere between a Proverbs 31 woman and Madea.” If that doesn’t fit the fallen me I don’t really know what does. Instead of me celebrating that and accepting that I’m missing the mark it should (and does) grieve me that I’m falling short. I need to dig in and strive harder to be a Proverbs 31 woman. I need to try harder to always show respect to my husband, because the fact is, I don’t. Yes, I love Jesus, but that doesn’t make it okay or not that big of a deal that I am sometimes disrespectful to my husband.
Ladies we need to guard our hearts more than ever right now. Dig deep into God’s Word and what HE says, try to live the way He says we should live our life. Anyone can write a book, make a meme, put some vinyl on a t-shirt and use God’s name, but that doesn’t make it Biblical, that doesn’t make it the way we should live.
Again this isn’t about being judgmental, this is about cautioning you. I fall short daily, multiple times a day, but I can’t allow myself to get to a place where I think “It is okay to cuss, be disrespectful, react in anger (SIN) because I love Jesus.“.
Peace and blessings!
ForgeFlower 