I am sure you will have noticed the work which is currently taking place around and inside the Church building. The extent of the problem came as a shock to us all, but nonetheless has to be fixed. Dry rot is a serious problem, and can remain unseen for months and years. If it remains untreated it can destroy whole buildings.
As I have been thinking about the dry rot in our Church building and the destruction which it has caused, I have been lead to think about our own lives and human nature. It is naturally in us to sin. We don’t have to be taught how to sin, we don’t learn it, we are not shown, it is naturally in us and our default setting is to sin. Like dry rot, if sin remains not dealt with, it can and will destroy our lives. It may not show itself straight away and can take years and months to bubble to the surface, but it will destroy our spiritual life. Sin separates us from God and destroys our relationship with Him.
However, there is hope, all is not lost. The dry rot in Church is being treated by exposing the infected areas and injecting a solution into the wall and the timbers. Once the walls have been re-plastered, a number of sensors will be fitted around the church to monitor the level of damp in the building and will be checked annually. This is an expensive treatment, but necessary. Also in our lives, our sin needs to be exposed and treated. We need to expose our sin to Jesus, ask and allow Him to inject us with his forgiveness and do our utmost to follow Him all our days. We also need to ground ourselves in the Word of God by reading and studying it, and ask the Holy Spirit to be our sensor, warning us when the temptation to sin comes our way. The good news with this is that it is free. It costs us nothing, but yet it cost Jesus everything.
The hymn writer Charles H. Gabriel (1856-1932) in the hymn ‘O how marvellous, O how wonderful’ describes exactly how the cost of taking away our sin has already been paid for us in these words:
He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them His very own;
He bore the burden to Calvary,
And suffered and died alone.
Please don’t let sin destroy your relationship with God, and don’t let it deprive you of the hope and joy of knowing that you are forgiven by the one who loves you most - the Lord Jesus.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1st John 1:8-9
As I have been thinking about the dry rot in our Church building and the destruction which it has caused, I have been lead to think about our own lives and human nature. It is naturally in us to sin. We don’t have to be taught how to sin, we don’t learn it, we are not shown, it is naturally in us and our default setting is to sin. Like dry rot, if sin remains not dealt with, it can and will destroy our lives. It may not show itself straight away and can take years and months to bubble to the surface, but it will destroy our spiritual life. Sin separates us from God and destroys our relationship with Him.
However, there is hope, all is not lost. The dry rot in Church is being treated by exposing the infected areas and injecting a solution into the wall and the timbers. Once the walls have been re-plastered, a number of sensors will be fitted around the church to monitor the level of damp in the building and will be checked annually. This is an expensive treatment, but necessary. Also in our lives, our sin needs to be exposed and treated. We need to expose our sin to Jesus, ask and allow Him to inject us with his forgiveness and do our utmost to follow Him all our days. We also need to ground ourselves in the Word of God by reading and studying it, and ask the Holy Spirit to be our sensor, warning us when the temptation to sin comes our way. The good news with this is that it is free. It costs us nothing, but yet it cost Jesus everything.
The hymn writer Charles H. Gabriel (1856-1932) in the hymn ‘O how marvellous, O how wonderful’ describes exactly how the cost of taking away our sin has already been paid for us in these words:
He took my sins and my sorrows,
He made them His very own;
He bore the burden to Calvary,
And suffered and died alone.
Please don’t let sin destroy your relationship with God, and don’t let it deprive you of the hope and joy of knowing that you are forgiven by the one who loves you most - the Lord Jesus.
“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1st John 1:8-9
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