Today's Devotional

August 11, 2005

Subject:  Making Up For Sin

Ephesians 2:8 - 9 "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast."

At our school orientation for teachers, we played a game called "flash judgments."  It was designed to show how we have preconceived ideas and stereotypes about people.  To play the game they put a picture of a person on the screen and you had to identify if you had positive, neutral or negative feelings from the picture.  One picture was of a young, overweight girl and I put a negative rating down for her.  Later we had to identify through a multiple choice question, the kind of position each person held.  I correctly identified that she was probably the president of some organization.  The team I was on was shocked that I made that judgment after giving her a negative rating.  My explanation was that I believed that most people try to compensate for their shortcomings by excelling in other areas.  

I also believe that we do that with God too.  Some people simply look at the negatives in their lives and push that much harder in other areas to "offset" the bad.  Concerning sin, many times I've heard people say, "boy I need to go to church after last week," as though that act itself has merit with God.  Sometimes it's more subtle where someone will feel better after performing some type of service as compensation for wronging someone or doing something they know was wrong.  That's not God's way.

God wants us to be whole and complete and that can only happen through faith and trust in Him.  The answer for sin is confession and repentance.  There is no balancing it out.  All of your "good" works are meaningless if you haven't gone the way of faith.   

Today we need to look at our lives and see if perhaps we're trying to even the score with God.  If so, go the way of faith through grace and realize that there is no making up for sin.  If you haven't confessed it and repented of it, it's still hindering your fellowship with The Almighty.

Carlen