Browsing Tag

Trust

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Why Is Adultery that Game-changing Sin?

Posted on March 9, 2020

If you are a Mrs. and you are a Christian, you are twice married and, assuming your husband is still living, there’s a sense in which you have two husbands. I hope, for Mrs. Colley, the sentiments below are always true of both my relationship to my husband and that to my Lord. When those who are in a covenant relationship with God become unfaithful to the vow made at baptism, they are referred to as spiritual adulterers in both testaments:

She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Jeremiah 3:8.

You adulterous people![c] Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4

Many have posited that God is so hurt by spiritual adultery that He empathetically gives us the right to remarry in case of a spouse’s adultery (Matthew 19:9). He wants us to be able to recover and find comfort after the infidelity of a spouse. He knows how that feels.

But it could be true that one of the reasons marital unfaithfulness is the only acceptable scenario for remarriage is that God wanted to magnify this sin in our minds. Perhaps he wanted mankind to know how much we hurt Him when we place the things of this world–sin–in the position we once gave to God.

Or maybe it’s both. I do know this: As I occasionally speak with innocent parties, in marriages in the body of Christ, in which adultery has taken the trust, I’m left with the indisputable knowledge that the hurt is deeper than any I see in other scenarios of sin.

And yet there is forgiveness. If I’ve learned any thing from observation about the sin of marital infidelity, it’s that it’s possible to repent, gain forgiveness and put a marriage back on a fast track to happiness. Sometimes, righted early on, it’s possible to do this without damaging children, without hurting the influence of the local church, and without the eternal loss of souls. And God’s teaching us there, too. There’s time now, to right relationships with God in heaven. If you’ve walked away from the One who loves you supremely, you’ll never find that perfect love in anything the world has to offer. But, as time passes, it’s harder to undo the damage. Influence for heaven is lost. Lives are hurt. Sin complicates relationships and, most of all, it weakens your own spiritual resolve to be faithful. Don’t wait. Come back to the One who loved you first and best.

Espoused to  One Husband
II Corinthians 11:2
If I love You, I’ll believe You
Though what You’ve pledged is far away.
What You say about tomorrow
Is what’s real for me today.If I love You, then I long
To hear Your strong, assuring voice.
I will trust You with my secrets;
Honor You in every choice.If I love You, I’ll defend You
When others ridicule Your name.
If all the world denies You, still
I’ll  count but loss the shame.If I love You, I will be there
Whenever You’re expecting me.
I will love whatever You love.
Where You are, I’ll long to be.If I love You, I will trust You.
All my hopes on You rely.
But should faith and hope be passing,
Love abides to never die!

 

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Can We Go to the Playground?

Posted on May 22, 2017

 

I smiled at  a recent conversation between my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson and his mother:

Ezra: “Can we go to the playground today?”

Ezra’s mom: “No…not today, baby.”

Ezra: “Can we go to the playground?” 

Ezra’s mom: “I said ‘Not today,’ Ezra.”

Ezra: “I’m going to give you oooone more chance, Mama. I said ‘Can we go to the playground?’”

Ezra’s mom: “Ezra, Mama and Daddy are the only ones who can say  ‘one more chance’”.

Ezra: “Oh…Well…Can we go to the playground?”

We do this sometimes with God. We wish for things and sometimes we even ask for things that we know are against His expressed will. He has already told us we cannot go to that playground, but we keep insisting that going there is what we desire, as if we are not listening to him at all. Sometimes we ask for material things, knowing all along that we already are much too obsessed with riches. We ask for promotions to other cities, not minding the fact that there are no faithful churches or Christian encouragers there. We ask for success on the corporate ladder without ever giving a thought to the stairway to heaven. This can also be described as the Balaam syndrome. (Read Numbers 22-24). 

Then we give God “another chance” sometimes. We act as if we are in control. We build our own little towers of Babel (Genesis 11) and begin to actually think we can make our own rules of philosophy and morality. We discount His absolute truth in favor of our relativism. We dismiss His power and talk about how we can save the planet. We even decide we can define things like life’s beginning point and marriage and even gender. We just kind of tell God that we’ll give Him another chance to get it right. 

James said it this way: 

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God (James 4:4).

All of our misguided ambitions and repeated pleas for things outside His will make  us His enemies and, ultimately separate us from Him eternally.

James also gives us the direct route to true success. It’s friendship with God. It’s spelled out in verses six through ten of the same chapter:

But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.