I was raised in the church and in a christian home, and I have marvelled at how many people I have known that have fallen away from the Lord.
The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Sin is like a warrant used by the enemy to enter into our lives. When we choose sin over God's way of living, it is literally like giving our enemy a right to enter our lives and steal, kill, and destroy! Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly! Don't allow the enemy to ruin your life!
When I say "sin", I mean "missing the mark". There is one "bulls eye"--one standard--and that's the holiness of the Almighty God; anything less than that is SIN! "Sin" is originally a term used in archery for anything other than a bull's eye. Jesus Christ is the only one to ever hit the target!
The enemy of our souls (whose aim is to steal, kill and destroy) has distorted in our fallible minds the ideas of holiness and sin. You can easily see that after a few generations of this distorted view, people would literally be shooting wherever and whenever they wanted to! This would lead to utter chaos and an all out war(in the physical realm).
Satan's position in warfare is a usurper and deceiver--one who has no lasting authority of his own. So, because of this, he seeks to take other's authority and use it as if it were his own. We, as men and women, were created in God's image, with His authority to rule the earth. Satan has corrupted us since the beginning. History has shown that even corrupted authority is still very powerful! Judging from the state of our world, you can see he's had great success in making many parts of the globe steal, kill, and destroy. It doesn't matter whose flag you are under; if there is hate in your heart, you are doing the will of the devil!
Jesus called it what it was in His day, and I'm attempting to do the same in my day. The wicked Jews in Jesus's day proudly asserted,"We have Abraham as our father!" He (Jesus)was friends with Abraham, so told them,"You do the will of your father, the devil. He was a murderer from the beginning!"
I have seen many people professing to be Christians, but their lives are so full of hate, lies, anger, and unforgiveness that it makes me wonder who they are following. Jesus is kind. He is the truth. He only has righteous anger. He is FULL of forgiveness! It's time we did a heart check because man looks on the outward, but God looks at the heart! (Hebrews 4:13) And There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
The end of every story is a lot more than just "being good" or "doing the right thing". This is war, and there is a victor! So there is a loser as well. Jesus has won the victory by his own shed blood and resurrection. The war rages on though, til the end of this age.
The choice belongs to every man, woman and child. Who will you serve? Who will be your master? The moral of children's (and adult's) lessons should be: "You, in your life, will either have total victory or total defeat!" I know the spirit of compromise would say there are a lot of "gray" areas, but the Holy Spirit says,"Choose this day whom you will serve!"
We are ever so thankful for God's kindness that leads us to repentance and His grace that covers us every day! Without His kindness and grace, I would have been lucky to be a smudge on the pages of history, much less make my mark with intelligible speech!
