Sinning with Stretchy Pants

Our youth pastor once talked about how avoiding sin required some prep work. You need safe guards in place. He compared it to going over to a certain family's house, who is known for serving yummy meals, while he is on a diet. He said that it required doing some prep work which meant that he would take along his own food, to ensure he stayed on his diet.

Sitting in my pew, I felt a little ashamed. When he mentioned doing prep work before going over to that family's house for the meal, my first thought was to skip all other meals that day and wear stretchy pants so I could pig out.

So instead of sticking with what is right, I immediately went to planning a way to not do what was right.

Definitely not a Hall of Faith moment there.

I have done that in my past. I knew I wasn't doing what God wanted me to do, but I went ahead and wore the proverbial stretchy pants so I wouldn't feel confined by my convictions.

We can come up with some great justifications while doing our sin planning. Just like I thought of skipping meals so that when I indulged later, it wouldn't be as bad, we convince ourselves the sin we are planning on doing isn't as bad as another sin. The problem with that is the fact that sin is sin.

There are no big sins or little sins. We like to categorize them as such because it makes us feel better. We don't feel we are as bad as we could be if we were doing such and such. Or we aren't as bad as that other sinner over there. But Jesus only died on one cross. He didn't die on a big cross to pay for the big sins and then go die on a small cross for the little sins.

One size cross fits ALL our sins.

Back to the stretchy pants.

Instead of thinking of ways to plan how we can sin and get away with it (yeah, there's no getting away with sinning), we should spend our energy and time thinking of ways to plan how to avoid sin.

So no more stretchy pants for me!

Beat the Odds with Bob Holmes!

Our church brought in this speaker, Bob Holmes. He goes into schools and plays volleyball against teams by himself! He has even played against professional athletes. He is able to draw the crowd with this amazing talent and gets to talking to the crowd. Bob Holmes addresses the hard issues of bullying, suicide, and substance abuse. He eventually is able to share the Gospel of  Christ with the crowd.

Last night we had our rally. Even though our church usually holds a Wednesday night service, we instead met in a gym and invited the community. Utah needs to hear this message. We are one of the states that has a high rate of suicide. According to one website, we have 14 suicides per 100,000 people. We have lost church members to suicide. Our twelve-year-old son lost member in his Civil Air Patrol. The young man was only in the ninth grade.

A crowd did come forward at the end to hear about Jesus. I don't know what exactly went on in their hearts, but I sure hope they chose Jesus.





For more information on Bob Holmes, please visit Beat the Odds