Satan’s plan is not just to get us to sin so we turn from God for a season. He has a bigger plan for our life. Oswald Chambers says he wants to “shift our point of view.”[1] While Martin Luther says, “he wants to destroy our faith.” If we look at sin from what it will accomplish in our life span instead of what it will do to us today, our view might be different. Think about a drug addict for a moment. They start out small just to feel better but if we look down the road five, ten, twenty years, you’ll see a person so engaged that they can’t live without it. They will give up everything including family, friends and dreams that were important to them before the addiction. But are we any different than the drug addict? Oh yes you say, but we are only different in which we choose to use. While we may not use a drug, we use more socially acceptable sins in our lives. Could it be we get our fix from pride, lust, resentment or even a work based faith, or in other words self-righteousness. While we may cover up and wrap them in a nice external package that looks good to others, they are still an abomination to God. Remember Satan wants to change your point of view. If he can keep your affections upon the pleasures of sin and off of God then he can keep you trapped on the fix of sin. We are like a helpless drug addict who is total dependency and choices are made by the drug. So our choices are made by our sin of choice. For example, pride places a bit in our mouth and controls every move we make. It tells us what we will do with our lives, and how we will deal with others. When we desire to be humble before others our pride says “do it in such a way that we get all the attention”. If we are to love one another, do it in such a way that everyone takes notice on how good we are. We will be controlled in every situation by how the sin of pride dictates our lives. In every sin it changes our view and takes us on a road much like the addict. Much like pride we believe we aren’t the ones who needs to change but others should change for us. The same is true with every other sin in this world. It has become our master if we allow it to distort our thinking, feelings, and actions. It masters our choice of whom we will love and whom we will hate. It masters how we treat others and whom we will mistreat. It tells us what to desire and what we will covet. And the sad part of it all is that we don’t even realize that we are under its yoke until it is too late. Until we have been lead away from our relationship from God into a relationship with sin. And we finally see its results after many painful events in our lives and the lives of those who we profess to love; when relationships and commitments are broken and full of mistrust. If you think that isn’t true about yourself then take a test to be sure and ask God to show you how sin has affected your life. Pray Psalm 139: 23 – 24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Then look around this week at your life and see how your sin is affecting others and your relationship to them. And ask yourself once again does sin hurt?
[1] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Barbour Publishing Inc., Uhrichville, OH, Copyright 1935, September 18, His Temptation and Ours. Oswald Chambers put it this way, ”Satan does not tempt us to do wrong things; he tempts us in order to make us lose what God has put into us by regeneration, viz., the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come on the line of tempting us to sin, but on the line of shifting the point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.”
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