What is the difference between sin and making mistakes in life

Welcome to episode 202, In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 202. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I want to continue to talk a little bit about sin, and I want to kind of give it in the context of messing up, because I am the— I don't know that I'm the king of messing up, but I'm not real good at doing everything perfectly. And I just want to give you a little bit of encouragement that you can continue to go on with your life even though you mess up. And I want to use the example. I was cooking at this Labor Day, I was cooking brisket. And if anybody has ever smoked a brisket, you know that it's kind of long, tedious work. You got to rub the brisket down and marinate it. I put a dry rub on it, and I'm not going to go into all the details, but I had it prepared. I woke up early in the morning, actually my wife woke up, in case she listens to this, She woke up early in the morning and took it out of the refrigerator to get it to room temperature. And then I got up early in the morning, not as early as my wife, but she went back to bed. And I've got the brisket, I got the smoker plugged up and got it heating up. And then I got the brisket and was gonna put it on the smoker. And then that's where the wheels came off. And I just want to tell you that Even though I screwed it up royally, I tried to put the brisket in the pan and it just went from bad to worse. I put it in there, I had it on the grill rack, and then I touched my arm to the grill, to the smoker, and of course it burnt because it was like 250 degrees or whatever the smoker was because I went ahead and heated it up. And it burnt my arm and I jumped back and the brisket dumps into The water, the rubbed brisket that, that dumped into the water. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So I dig it out of the water that's for the smoker, put the rack on, put the brisket back on. My wife wakes up later and I told her about it and she's like, you gotta be kidding me. So then we had to re-rub it. Anyway, all of that said, we did all of this and then there was a couple other things and I'm not gonna bore you with all the details, but when we don't do something for a while, you forget the proper way to do it. And if you have never done it, and we smoked a brisket once or twice on that smoker, and you know, it was just kind of one of those things to where there was a couple of things I wish I'd have done something different. But the bottom line is when we all sat down to eat as a family, it was delicious. And no one saw the mess-ups except me and God, and I had to tell my wife about it. But my point is that life went on, and I would just want to encourage you, it's okay to mess up. God had a plan. God had a plan for you and I because he knew all would sin. And a popular scripture on this episode is Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." God knew that we couldn't be perfect. God is a wonderful God. He had an answer, and the answer was Jesus. He sent his one and only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son in the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. And so with that in mind and that in the backdrop, I just want to tell you and I want to encourage you, you're gonna mess up. And this is not Greg giving you the license to sin. This is not me saying, hey, it's okay to sin. Sin is horrible. In fact, I wrote a book, What Is Sin and What Does Sin Look Like? There's no part of sin that is good in the long run, but sin is fun for a season because Satan knows what he's doing and he will trap you with the pleasure or the fun or whatever it is that you think you're getting out. The temptation is You know, Satan is such a punk, he puts all of the good stuff on the front and the payment is on the back end. And so if you look at it, sin is like a credit card. You just keep putting it on and putting it on, and you, you keep putting more and more and more on that total until you get to a place where you can't pay it, and the payment is death. And I just want to encourage you that God paid the whole bill. He paid your whole bill. He paid for all sin, past, present, and future sin. Jesus' death on the cross paid for sin. And you and I, all we have to do is ask God to come into our life, pay that price that we couldn't pay, and sin's wiped off. It is off the ledger. If you're an accountant or have an accountant's mind, You know, there's debits and credits. This is a huge credit. God puts this on your account, and no sin is ever going to be counted against you because you have accepted what Jesus did. And when Jesus said, "It is finished," he did all of it. That is the beauty of Christianity. This is Christianity 101, that Jesus paid for all sin. And it's amazing, and we don't understand it. This is called the good news. That most people can't understand the fact that, but I messed up. But I— and God knew you were going to mess up. God knew. God sees the end from the beginning. He knew we were going to have a decent Labor Day barbecue, but he knew I was going to burn my arm because, you know, I do some stupid stuff and I didn't do it in the proper order. And he knew it was going to happen, but he didn't send an angel and he didn't say, oh my God, Greg's going to screw this thing up if I don't intervene. He allowed me with my free will to screw up that brisket at the beginning. We fixed it. It wasn't a total loss. It was just a mistake. And I want to say, you know, most of the things that we do in life, they're just little mistakes. And if we continue to, to lop onto it, if we don't stop it right there in its tracks, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And this is called— this is where repentance comes in. If we say Dang, I messed up. And I've got that kind of repentance mentality, I guess, because when my wife— I didn't just whistle like nothing happened. I told her, I said, I mighta— I dumped the brisket. I mean, I didn't want to tell her. I didn't want to tell her I was an idiot, but she already knows it. And God already knows, you know, so it's not a big deal. I mean, if you just come clean, then we can fix the problem. And God's already fixed the problem, you know, where sin's involved. And you just come clean and you say, God, I'm sorry, I messed up again, and we get in the Word. This is soapbox moment number 755, I think we're up to. We're at a bunch of soapbox, but you have to get into the Word. We are— our goal is to hear well done. Our goal is to be a disciple. And Jesus said his disciples abide in his Word. So if our goal is to become a disciple of Jesus, in order to do that, we have to abide in his Word. If we do that, there is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. We are not condemned. Satan can tell us and call us names and stupid and all that stuff, and he can talk in your head, and he can— you can have a negative self-talk all you want, but God is going to tell you that you're his favorite, and God is going to tell you that he's proud of you. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. That is what God speaks over you. That is what God is wanting you to hear every day when you wake up. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. This is my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased. That is what God wants you to hear every single day. And as you go and as you build God's kingdom, and we've talked about this, and I just want to encourage you that it's okay to mess up. It's okay not to be perfect. I don't want to give you permission to sin, but when you do mess up, and you're gonna mess up, you're— there's no way. If you're gonna be perfect, the people in the grave are not making any mistakes, but they're also not having any successes. Their race has been run. And it's so cool. We just got to get out there. We have got to get after this thing called life, and we can't do it on the pew. We can't do it sitting down. We— faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. You have got to hear the word of God in your ears, either by the preacher preaching or a teacher teaching, or you reading it, or the Holy Spirit kind of digging it around. You've got to be in the word, and then you've got to learn— use wisdom to apply the word to your life and your situation. And how can I make this better? And one of the hardest scriptures I have come across, because I get a little bit irritated on the road— if this is your first time, but there's times, you know, I— and I'll just tell you another quick story and then I'm going to sign off. But I had just purchased a new truck. I waited all my life, never had a truck, got a brand new truck in '18. I was so fired up. Probably the second month I had it I was in a shopping center parking lot that has buggies and all that, and people did not push their buggies. And this is another discussion for another day, but they didn't put them in the little buggy bin. There's no real benefit. I mean, that's kind of how you can tell, in my humble opinion, how you can tell about someone's character is if they'll walk that little shopping cart back to the buggy bin. It's on your merit. You can stick it in the parking lot, and you can just let it sit there if you want. No one's gonna arrest you. No one's gonna write you a ticket. But when this person that didn't put it up, there was a big windstorm come in and it blew this buggy full steam, however fast the wind was blowing while I was in this store. I come out and there's a buggy parallel right up against my truck. And I'm like, oh my gosh, who would put that buggy right next to my truck? You know? And so I'm trying to feel some kind of way. And then I looked down and they didn't put it there. What happened was the wind was still blowing. What happened was they just parked it 3 or 4 stalls away from me and didn't walk it to the bin. And the wind blew it and it went headfirst into my truck bed. And there are 2 wonderful little dents in that truck bed. And I'm telling you, I was hot. And then the Holy Spirit— and for people that don't think that God speaks to you. This is what I heard in my head, and I'm mad. And if you know me, you know that I'm mad. And I, you know, I'm just inside my head mad, and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me, I just brand new truck, blah blah blah. And you probably had some of the same discussions in your head before. But then this thought comes in my head, you know, you got to pray for that person. What? I ain't praying for that person. The person that didn't put their shopping cart up, I'm praying for him? Or her? No, I'm mad. You know you're supposed to pray for those that spitefully use you. And you heard the dead air just then. That is what went on in my head. I am like, you've got to be kidding me, I've got to pray for this person? And so I did. I started praying for this person. I started praying God and asking God, bless that person that didn't put that buggy up. And I'm telling you, at first I It was through gritted teeth, and it was something that I'm like, "Uh-uh, this is..." And so the more I prayed for that person, and every time I see that bump on the— I don't know, have a clue who didn't put that shopping cart up. When I see that dent in my truck, and I've had it now for 2 or 3 years, it reminds me to pray for that person, and that person probably needs prayer more than you or I need prayer. And so I'm praying for this person that I've never met. In their— I'm going to say ignorance, or in their pridefulness, or they're not giving a dang about putting something up— they put a dent in my truck. I'm just going to blame them. It's their fault. But I have forgiven them, and I have started praying for them when I see that. I don't pray for them every day. When I see that dent in my truck, I do pray for that person. And it's become easier. I don't know, it may just be spiritual. I may just be that super spiritual guy, but I'm telling you, it didn't start started off super spiritual. It started off mad as all get out, and it just turned to where now I can see that this person is a child of God, that this person is God's favorite, and they just might have messed up one time. It's this whole kingdom of God that we're talking about. It's difficult. That's why it's narrow and it's difficult, because if you read the word and you abide in the word and the word abides in you, The Holy Spirit will bring up stuff that you don't, you don't want to do. And I'm just telling you that it's to your benefit and it's to your best interest to live by the Word of God. And I just want to encourage you, you don't have to be perfect. God sent a perfect example for us to follow after, and God does not expect perfection, but he does expect correction. And he wants you to correct your course and continue to go after his Son. And let's stop there. God, I thank you so much. Your son. I thank you for the perfect example that you've given us in your word, Lord. I thank you for the Bible that we're able to abide in daily. And God, I thank you for this listener. I thank you for the change that you've had on this podcast and in my life. And I thank you that you're allowing me to just spread my spiritual wings, or my Christian wings, or whatever it is we're going to call this, and get after another avenue. And God, I'm excited about where you're taking us. And I'm excited to follow after you, Lord. And I thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.