He gave it ALL for you

What are you willing to give up for Christ?  Better yet, what are you not willing to give up for Him? What worldly activities, things, desires, etc take precedence over your love for God?  Sex, alcohol, drugs, excessive spending, a relationship, lustful thoughts/desires, porn, etc…  There are so many people who say that they are Christians, yet they delight more in these worldly pleasures than they delight in Christ.  They recognize some of these actions as sin in someone else’s life, but refuse to see it as sin in their own lives.  They always come up with ways to justify it and they say that God accepts this justification. Is this fair to God?

 I have a confession, this was and is me.  I have struggled with a shopping obsession for years now.  I’ve lived beyond my means.  Every time my mom would get upset with me, I always told myself that I could stop spending whenever I wanted and that I was strong enough to resist buying that cute new top or a new pair of jeans.  WRONG.  I always justified my spending somehow in ways that I don’t even understand anymore.  I also convinced myself that God accepted this justification.  WRONG again.  I finally accepted that this was a spiritual matter and that I was worshipping an idol.  My idol was material items, especially clothing.  If I was feeling down, there was nothing that a new sweater couldn’t fix; if I was stressed, retail therapy was the perfect antidote; or I would just go shopping for the heck of it because there was this high that I got every time that I purchased an awesome new dress or pair of shoes, even though God knows that I didn’t need of those things.  I looked for my satisfaction, which lasted temporarily, in these material items.  I didn’t look to God during my down and stressful times.  I didn’t trust him; instead I trusted in these items that offered immediate deliverance of these feelings.  Of course, the satisfaction found in material items is only temporary.  You are on this high until something better is found or until the next wave of stress comes.  This search for satisfaction and constant fulfillment of that satisfaction gets worse and is very expensive.  After years of this constant search for fulfillment, God has finally broke me.  He’s been working on my heart for a while, but I can definitely trace his work in this area in my life back to Kenya.  In Kenya, I witnessed how happy people can be with so few possessions.  I witnessed how people are completely, 100% satisfied with God and only God-simply being in his presence was enough.  However, Kenya didn’t break me completely.  But God was working.  It seems that I felt more and more guilty and convicted every time I slid that credit card-at first I just ignored it, but it became inescapable.  God has surrounded me with stories, bible passages, sermons, etc that focus on using money for the advancement of the kingdom and being good stewards of our money because it ultimately belongs to God.  My final breaking point was when I was telling the story of my cousin’s friend’s mom who will buy her daughter and her daughter’s 4 best friends clothing and such as if it’s no big deal to just drop $1000 on kids who aren’t even hers and definitely have more than enough clothing.  I would say that that lady just wasn’t being a good steward of her money and that she wasn’t’ spending her money wisely until it finally hit me like a punch in the face that the lady I was talking about was me.  I was judging her spending habits and trying to remove the speck from her eye, while I still had this massive plank just hanging out of mine. 

                However, I serve a God of great, abundant grace and he has showered me with his grace.  I have repented of my idolatry and my reckless spending and he has SHOWERED me with his love.  I always said that I had given up everything for Christ, but I knew that I was lying to myself.  Now I can truly say that I have given it all up for him.  I have given God my burden and he has taken it.  I was struggling for the longest time with just doubts of God’s presence in my life.  I longed to hear him and I prayed to hear him and for him to guide me, but I just felt like there was complete silence from his end.  I think that by not giving up my shopping and spending habits there was a huge massive wall built up between God and me.  The wall separating us has been torn down.  I have fully surrendered to him.  I know that I will struggle with temptation because Satan knows my weaknesses and he will prey on them, but I know that God can get me through the temptation if I bring it to him. 

So this brings me back to my question at the end of the first paragraph: is this fair?  Is it fair to God that we refuse to give up these areas of sin in our lives?  Is this fair to God, the God that gave up EVERYTHING for us?  THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT FAIR!  God gave up more than we will ever be able to understand for us.  He gave up paradise in heaven to come to this dark world as Jesus Christ- Son of the Living God who is both fully God and fully human.  God made the ultimate sacrifice to save us by sending His one and only Son, knowing that Jesus would have to suffer on our behalf.  Jesus gave up his LIFE for us.  Jesus endured not only the physical pain of being nailed to a cross, but on top of that he was carrying the weight of OUR sin on his shoulder to endure a death that WE deserve.  Can you imagine how heavy and painful of a burden it is to carry the whole WORLD’s sin?  We get drug down by most minute sin.  God gave up everything for us because of his unfailing, powerful LOVE for us.  We don’t deserve to be loved by God who is perfect and who WE backstabbed, but yet He loves us so much that he gave up the most important thing to him-His sinless, perfect Son.  How selfish are we to refuse to give up these areas of sin in our lives?  How unfair is it to claim to follow and love God, yet continue to have premarital sex or to continue to get drunk?  How is that showing God that you love him?

I looked to my clothing/shopping/spending obsession as a way to fill a void in my heart and as a way to “fit-in”.  We all want to be accepted by our peers so we do what we think will make them accept us.  I used my shopping habit as a way to find satisfaction.   And I think that satisfaction and fitting in are the main reasons that we indulge in these earthly pleasures.  We give in and have sex with a boy/girl thinking that he/she will finally like me or we get hammered drunk just so we can ensure that our friends will accept us, but then we put on a “Christian” face on Sunday morning and refuse to recognize our sin. 

People, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks.  It only matters what God thinks of you.  To be accepted and loved my God and rejected by the world is bliss.  Do you truly love God?  Are there areas of sin that you are ignoring and refusing to give up?  Give that sin over to the God who loves you so much and so unconditionally that He gave his LIFE for you! 

  Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.  Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.