Presuming God’s Presence – Paul Chappell
Oh, how deceived we can be to sin in our lives! How arrogant we can become as we walk around in our religious garb – fully conscious of those “secret sins” in our heart. We may be able to impress those around us, but the Lord’s presence is farrrr from us! May each of us look in the mirror and get honest with ourselves! There is no sin that is worth missing out on the presence of God in our lives.
A sound warning from this morning’s “Daily in the Word” by Paul Chappell…
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PRESUMING GOD’S PRESENCE
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2015
“And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.”
Judges 16:19–20
Though Samson was greatly used by God to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines, he refused to obey God. He seems to have thought that because God had blessed him over and over, he was exempt from obedience. Even after he told Delilah the secret of his strength and the Philistines cut his hair and violated the Nazarite vow that had been with him for all of his life, Samson still assumed that God’s presence and power would be there just as they had always been before.
The reality is that God doesn’t owe us anything. Instead we owe everything to Him. And He is not in the business of ignoring our sins—even the ones that are hidden from the view of others. Often we put the outward sins at the top of the list of the “worst” kinds of sins. But sin begins on the inside with our decisions to go our way rather than God’s way. Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. said, “Behind every tragedy of human character lies a long process of wicked thinking.”
We never store up credit with God by doing good that will lead to Him overlooking sin. The presence and power of God rest on the holy life, and if we assume He is there no matter what we have been doing, we are headed for disaster. While we would never declare that we do not need God, we sometimes live as if we are not completely dependent on Him.