Feeling guilty?

I remembered something that happened when I was about four; I’m not sure why but I was intrigued by “hot” things when I was a child! I took the iron and tried to iron my dad’s cloth handkerchiefs on top of the clothes hamper, suddenly it was in flames high over my head, I was told I shouldn’t play with the iron! Then I did another bad thing, daddy had gotten a new car that had a cigarette lighter in it, you might remember them, you pushed it in and it got red-hot! That was so interesting for a little girl to see and again I had been told that I should never touch it as it would burn me! I caught my parents not looking, pushed it in and when it popped out and was glowing red, for some reason I put it up to my nose and touched the end of it leaving a bright red burn! I went in the house and my nose was burning so bad that I wanted to cry and there was no way to hide it from mother’s eagle eye, busted! Adam and Eve got caught big time when God came for his evening walk with them and found them cowering behind a bush, ashamed of their nakedness! (Genesis 3) When we read of Cain and Able (Genesis 4:7-10) Cain must have felt frightened when God asked where his brother was! Joshua 7:1-26 is the story of Achan who took the clothes and the wedge of gold when they were directly told not to do so! He really was busted when his whole family was thrown into a pit and stoned! Samson must have felt like a dope being duped by Delilah who caused him to sin against everything he had been taught. Isaiah 59:12 For our sins are piled up before God and testify against us. We all know the feeling of knowing you have been wrong about something and being very sorry, maybe not that you did wrong, but that you got caught! Numbers 32:23…and you may be sure that your sin will find you out. I can’t tell you the number of times my mother said that to me in my growing up years!

There is good news in Romans 5:20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end. Don’t you feel better now? I know there are people who teach “sloppy grace”, which is, anything goes and you just get by with it! That is not true, especially if you forsake Jesus as the only Savior, or offend the Holy Spirit.  If you are feeling “busted” just know that Jesus died to cover you and the Word also says, 1Peter 4:8 And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”  When we get busted in an act of wrong doing, Jesus stands at the Throne and reminds God that he died for us to cover our sins, you are forgiven!