Stay Away from the Wicked Part Two
Food is often a struggle for me. Some days it seems to be the thorn in my side. I’ve lost 145 pounds, but it wasn’t easy. Guess what? It’s still not easy trying to keep it off.
There are days I stop fighting the battle and give in to overeating. There are days I choose my feelings over the truth, and the next thing I know I’m feeling the regret of my choices. It’s a struggle and I hate it.
But despite my struggles and sin, God is still there with open arms, waiting for me to return to Him and not the comforts of food. I repent. I receive His grace. I run to His arms. I accept His forgiveness. I get back on track. And then . . . I mess up again.
But the glory is in the struggle.
And as Joyce Meyer often says, “I’m not where I need to be, but thank God I’m not where I used to be.”
My struggle with food doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me a real person, with real struggles. Whether it’s food, drugs, working too much, or homosexuality, we’re all broken people in need of a savior.
John 10:28 tells us that Jesus gave us eternal life and no one can snatch that away from us. This is not, however, an excuse to keep sinning, as we discussed earlier.
If someone living in the homosexual lifestyle comes to know Jesus Christ, then they are a new creation in Christ Jesus. But what if they don’t act that way?
I came to know Jesus Christ in 2006. By that time, I had been in a homosexual relationship for four years. I didn’t immediately break off that relationship and everything was fine. For one reason, I still didn’t know what I was doing was wrong. Why? I was ignorant to what God’s Word said.
I was saved on July 31, 2006, sitting in the office of my home. What would have happened if, on August 1, I died in a car accident? Would I be in hell?
The answer is no. I had received eternal life twenty-four hours earlier by my decision to follow Jesus Christ. Though I was still walking in my sins, I was saved by grace. Eternal salvation was mine to keep.
It took me five months to end that relationship. Why? Because I was fighting my flesh. I was battling against conviction and my emotions. It wasn’t someone telling me I was going to hell that helped me make that decision. It was the Holy Spirit guiding me. It was prayer. It was journaling. It was begging God to help me and show me the right way. It was learning who I really was in Christ, one step at a time.
Fast forward seven years later. What if I was still in that relationship? What if I was still claiming to be a follower of Christ, knowing what the Bible says about my sin, yet saying, “Oh well . . . I’m going to do it anyway”? Then I would have to question my salvation experience in the first place.
The same goes for drugs, alcohol, food, stealing, etc. If you are purposefully and deliberately operating in those sins, knowing they too are an “abomination,” then your salvation should be in question.
Please know that I realize we all struggle.
If an alcoholic falls and has a drink, his salvation is not in question. If a drug addict, after two years of being clean, gives into her feelings and emotions and gives in to her desires to snort a line of cocaine, she is not bound to hell for doing so. If someone who has struggled with homosexuality in the past, accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, yet has a one night stand with someone of the same sex, their salvation is not lost.
True repentance changes that. True repentance doesn’t allow us to stay where we’re at. It keeps us in the process of growing to be more like Christ daily, through our struggles.
Stay tuned for part three of this excerpt. You can have blog posts sent directly to your inbox when they’re published by signing up below.
