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The Fleeting Fun of Sin
From My Blog Archives: A Slippery Slope
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July 8, 2008
Dear Friends:julie2
 
This week we will take a look at the truth about sin. Both pieces in this issue remind us how easily we fall into temptation, turning away from the Lord in pursuit of our own pleasure. Yet that "pleasure" is fleeting at best, quickly leaving us with a bad aftertaste taste in our mouths and a yearning for something more.
 
Please use the link at the very bottom of this email and forward it on to a friend who could use some encouragement! Thanks!
 
Love, Julie
The Fleeting Fun of Sin
"What do you think-- is sin fun?" I asked my fifth grade class one day during Bible. I'll admit it, I was setting them up. I knew exactly what their automatic Sunday School-like response would be. 
 
"Nooo," they emphatically chorused. hot fudge sundae
 
They were dead wrong. Sin is fun. If I wanted to tempt someone to come off their Weight Watcher diet, would I do it with fried liver or perhaps a large pile of brussel sprouts? Of course not. I'd find something to offer far too good to resist. A hot fudge sundae or maybe creamy cheesecake. It would be something to cause the wavering of even the staunchest of resolutions.  Oh, yes. Satan is no fool. He makes sure sin is fun.
 
At least at the beginning, that is.  The problem is sin doesn't stay fun. Satan, along with his spiritual forces of evil Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6, has an agenda. His goal is not simply to make you stray from the path, or even to abandon the God of your salvation. His goal is your total destruction. Peter warned his readers: "Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).
 
When my children were small, we were crammed into a little two-bedroom house. We were thankful for that first home, but four growing children shrank the space each year that passed. By the time the kids were old enough to all be in school, we were getting desperate. Our neighbors up the street, the Schuppes, had moved away and their huge house built for a large family stood empty. It was calling our name.  We began to look into the possibility of moving there.
 
The Schuppe home was beautiful and bigger than anything we ever would have previously hoped to own. I spent nights lying awake dreaming about how I would decorate each room. Steve saw where I was headed and stopped me in my tracks. "We can have things to put in a house, or a house to put things in," he warned. Our budget would not allow for any big purchases over the next few years. We would be living on a shoestring.
 
The Lord blessed us and allowed us to buy that house.  At the beginning I was thrilled every time I walked in the front door. There was so much space! The children had room to play or lounge and not be right on top of each other. Each had their own bedroom. There was even a finished basement, enormous in size, for the kids to set up games or build blanket forts or even roller blade. Living there was truly a dream come true.
 
Yet after a few months, I began to notice that my furniture was looking lost in the larger spaces of our new home. What had filled our previous house looked skimpy and inadequate.  The dining room was totally empty. After a few months of living in my dream house, it wasn't enough. I began to crave more. For a year I prayed, begged, for a dining room set. If I could just get furniture in that room, I would be content. Finally, the big day happened. The Lord provided a beautiful dining room set that was perfect for the space.
 
You probably can guess what happened next. I needed more. The kids were taking piano lessons and were using an electric keyboard to practice. We needed a real piano. If I could just have that, I knew I would finally be happy. Another year went by. The Lord provided a piano.  How long did that make me content? A few weeks, maybe. Soon I was already on to the next item on my list. I had not yet learned that contentment is not in the next thing. It never will be. It is in being at peace with what you have.
 
The same "I need more" principle is true for sin. After sinning just one time, it will never be enough. The fun fades all too quickly. And we are left with a thirst for more. Like a drug addict with a need for an ever-increasing supply of narcotics to achieve the same high, we are driven in our sin. Once is never enough. Like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, who developed an insatiable hunger for Turkish Delight, we crave pleasure and satisfaction. In fact, looking for satisfaction in anything other than the Lord only pulls us away from the God who loves us.
 
What is the cure for our hearts which are prone to wander into sin? It is not in resolutions or promises to God. He knows better than we do how very weak we are. Psalm 103:14 assures us "For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust." God is aware of our human condition. No amount of good intentions will keep us from sinning.
 
Rather than deciding NOT to do something, it is more helpful to decide TO do something. There are many commandments in Exodus and Leviticus.  The Ten Commandments come to mind whenever we think of the rules of God. Yet Jesus did not quote one of these when asked by the Pharisees which command was most important. Instead, He quoted the Hebrew Shamah, found in Deuteronomy 6: 5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
 
The answer to avoiding sin is not a determination to abstain from it. It is a determination to remain full and satisfied in God. A hot fudge sundae is not a temptation to someone who has just finished a big meal. They can't imagine taking another bite.
 
Robert Redford once asked his friend Paul Newman what the secret was to keeping his happy marriage intact. Being a big, handsome movie star gave Newman many opportunities to stray, but he remained faithful to his wife. How did he do it? Newman replied, "Why go out for hamburger when there is steak at home?"
 
When we are spending time in the presence of God, studying His Word, and allowing His goodness and love to fill our empty spaces, we arm ourselves against sin. It is our most effective deterrent. Because sin is fun. Only when we are satisfied in Him can we hope to keep ourselves from falling.
From My Blog Archives
Saturday, February 16, 2008
A Slippery Slope
We don't get to do much of it in Maryland, but where I grew up in Connecticut, winter meant sledding. There was a good sized hill out behind the elementarysledding school in our neighborhood, where we would drag our sleds and toboggans after every fresh snowfall. There we would ride the hill, screaming in fear and delight as our sleds flew down the slope, waiting until we came to a complete stop before struggling up from our seat to lumber up the hill for yet another ride. This routine would continue until we couldn't feel our toes, or until the sky grew dark at the cold winter twilight. Whichever came first. Those memories are wonderful to have.

But getting back up that hill was no easy climb. The surface, packed down by sledders who had gone before us, was slick and difficult to navigate. Gravity worked against us the whole way back up the hill. It relentlessly pulled our bodies and the dead weight we determinedly dragged behind us downward toward the bottom once more. If we lost our footing, it was a slippery slope on which to try to counteract our momentum once we began to slide. It was hard work to get back up that hill! But the pain of the work was forgotten in the glory of the exhilarating ride.

There is a piece of our spiritual lives that is a slippery slope for us as well. Paul talks about it in his letter to the Romans. "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man . . ." (Romans 1:21-23).

Paul is describing a downward spiral in one's spiritual health. The descent looks something like this:

1. When we know God but do not honor Him, we begin to gradually lose ground. Something happens to taint our thinking process.
2. We have now lost the correct perspective, and our speculations become "futile," or useless.
3. This leads to a loss of spiritual illumination, and gradually our heart, the seat of our emotions and intellect, fades to black.
4. A heart which is in the dark leads to false perception about ourselves. We become wise in our own eyes. But the reality is we are really fools. We have sold out, exchanging our object of worship away from a glorious God to something of our own making.

Do you see the step by step progression into spiritual darkness?

It's a slippery slope. Why? Because it is so easy to begin the slide downward. Just as gravity and an icy surface can sometimes cause an unstoppable journey back to the bottom of the sledding hill, our natural inclinations can make our spiritual walk a real challenge.

Paul tells us that just knowing about God does not prevent this. Even Satan and his angels know about God! What does prevent the slide? A positive response to the Word of God. The people Paul is talking about were not ignorant. They had enough information to respond in the right ways. Verse 19-20 tells us God made the truth evident to them and they were without excuse. But their response to God's truth, according to verse 18, was to suppress it. They went into denial. It didn't fit their agenda. So they failed to honor their Creator as God. And the downward slide began.

Beware of the slippery slide. Casting Crowns has a song on their latest CD called "It's a Slow Fade." How true! As we make small decisions to place ourselves ahead of the God who should be honored at all cost, we begin to lose our footing. A few more missteps and we find that the slide has begun.

Fortunately, we have a Savior ready to reach out His hand and rescue us from the consequences of our own making. He waits for us to call on Him for assistance. We do not need to climb the hill alone. And as He takes our hand and pulls us upward, we wonder why we ever responded to Him in any other way.