Anyone who is a Christian can tell you what it’s like to go through times of rapid spiritual growth, followed by times of what seems like backward progress. We spend a lot of time battling the same things that we’ve been battling our entire lives, and many times it feels like we’re losing the battle. I know that in my own life there are several things I can name that I’ve been struggling with for as long as I can remember. For awhile I’ll have victory over them, but it never fails that a few days, weeks, or months later I fall right back into the same struggles. This can be incredibly discouraging at times.

Why is it so difficult to conquer sin in our lives?

I think the main reason is that we don’t really know how to rely completely on God. For a time, we’ll think we have victory over our sin, but a few days or weeks later, we’ll take our eye off the ball. Satan will tempt us, and whisper into our ears “you can do it yourself” or “you don’t need God,” and we find it incredibly easy to give into him because we’re tired. The second we stop relying on God to give us strength and to change us is the same second that we fall right back into sin. No matter how much we think we can, there’s not a single person on this earth that can conquer sin. If it were possible, Christ’s sacrifice would be unnecessary.

It’s something that I think comes back down to selfishness and pride. We don’t want to accept the fact that we’re weak and powerless before God. If we did, God wouldn’t have to humble us constantly like He does. That’s why we learn in waves. We get prideful, God humbles us, we learn, we forget, we get prideful, and it repeats. The Christian life is a never ending trail of ups and downs, but if you’re a true Christian it has an upward slant towards God. Hopefully, if you’re a Christian, you can look back a year ago or even a couple months ago and point out areas in your life where you’ve become more like Christ. If your heart is right, you should be finding it easier and easier to choose Christ over sin, but at the same time you should be spotting more and more sin in your life that you hadn’t noticed before. It should be more and more disgusting to you.

We try to have victory over sins ourselves, and we can’t do it. I know that I spend most of my battle against sin focusing on avoiding the actual act, and not focusing on Christ. This is the wrong approach. The Bible tells us over and over to keep our minds focused on Christ, and not on our fleshly desires. If we fill our minds with the things of God, it’s much more difficult for the sin to come sneaking in. No one is justified by the law (Galatians 3:11), and no one will choose right over wrong when it is left up to Him. (Romans 3:10-11)

“But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.” – 1 Timothy 6:11

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” – Philippians 4:8

If I were to fill the time that I spend battling the decision of whether or not to sin on my own with pursuing God and His Word, I would be much better off. The Bible doesn’t say “walk” away from Sin. It says to flee, and it says it numerous times! (1 Corinthians 6:18; 1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:22) We should desperately run away from sin, and cling to Christ without looking back. The second a sinful thought drifts into my mind, should I focus on not sinning? No! I should replace it with focus on what is pure, holy, and Christ. It’s inevitable that when we’re completely focused on Christ, we sin less.

When we’re focused on Him, it’s easier to follow our spiritual desire of Christ-likeness, and run from our desire for worldliness. When we seek to further our relationship with Christ, sinning less is an natural effect because our strength is coming from Christ, and not ourselves. The second we try to avoid sin on our own, we fail. The second we’re not relying on Christ to help us conquer sin, we fail, an the second we take our mind off Christ, we’re focused on what is worldly. We need to stop focusing on conquering sin ourselves, and start focusing on Christ’s character and who He really is.

Without Him we are nothing.

So, this past weekend I flew down to Florida to surprise my grandparents by coming to their 50th anniversary. All of their kids, and most of their grand-kids were there. It was the first time in awhile that they have had everyone in the same place. That combined with the fact that it was in Florida – which is a place that I have really great memories of from when I was little – brought back a whole flood memories of Family, Fun, and the South in general.

One thing that I have been blessed with beyond anything that I could ever ask for is a family, and an extended family, that are firmly rooted in biblical truth, and who aren’t afraid to step on toes to get the truth across. It’s one of those rare instances where hanging out with Family is actually a good thing!

I heard my grandpa preach this morning against the watered down gospel. There are so many people who either buy into, or preach the light and fluffy version of what Christianity really is. There’s a lot of “just open your heart, and let Jesus in”, “Jesus is waiting for you to accept him” and “pray this prayer, and you’ll be saved” out there.

First of all, it’s not that action of ‘praying the prayer’ or ‘opening your heart’ that saves you. There is absolutely nothing about the fact that you said you wanted “Jesus to come into your heart” that redeems you in God’s eyes, and when the emphasis is put on that prayer and how ‘easy’ it is, all it does is lead to either non-Christians that are thriving off an emotional high and couldn’t even explain what the gospel is to you if you asked, or to a whole lot incredibly weak Christians that have no perception of the depth of the Gospel, or of God’s character.

One example that was given in the sermon this morning was Billy Graham. When he was preaching on his circuits, they would actually plant people in the crowd to come forward when they had the alter calls. My grandpa got first hand experience of this. He was asked to be one of the ‘counselors’ that walked up towards the front. They did this to encourage non-Christians to do the same, and there were many that did that. But after Billy Graham was done, and he left the area, you could go into those same areas where the previous week ‘hundreds’ of people had been saved, and have trouble finding a single one of them. Where are all the converts? If so many people were coming to Christ, I’m pretty sure that the world wouldn’t be in the disgusting moral position that it’s in right now.

The issue is that convincing people that ‘praying the prayer’ saves them is the destruction of the gospel. You have to actually understand what the gospel is before you can believe in Christ and be saved. I’m not saying that ‘praying the prayer’ isn’t the point of salvation for some people, but I am saying that in order to be saved, it takes more than just saying those words. You have to understand what the gospel is, who Jesus is, and actually believe it – not just act on an emotional high of a ‘moving’ church service, but you need to understand on a more basic level, but deeper, level. If someone were to walk up and ask most of the people who ‘prayed the prayer’ when they were little, or at an alter call, what the gospel is and what you must do to be saved, they’d be unable to tell you.

In acts Acts 16:30-31 a prison guard asks Paul “what must I do to be saved”. What did Paul respond with? Was it “Ask Jesus to come into your heart”? Was it “Open the door and let Jesus in”? Was it “Pray this prayer”? No. Paul responds with, “believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” You must believe in your heart that Jesus is the Son of God. You must believe that God sent him here, and that Jesus paid the price for all of your sins. You must believe there’s nothing you can do of your own merit to the do same, and you must believe that Jesus rose again on the third day and that the price He paid on the cross was sufficient. You must make Him your Lord and your Savior.

Saying “Jesus is waiting, just let Him in” limits God. It’s like saying “Jesus has done everything He can to save you, but now you have to save yourself by ‘choosing’ Him.” God is the one that does the saving, and we have nothing to do with it. We believe in Him because the Holy Spirit enables us to and opens our eyes to the truth. We have the Holy Spirit because we hear the gospel, the Holy Spirit moves us to believe in Christ and we’re saved, we’re not saved because we ‘asked Him to come into our heart’.

Anyway, that was a big tangent, but I was very encouraged that my Grandpa wasn’t afraid to step on toes by confronting that head-on. There are a few in the group he was preaching to that have a more watered-down view of what the gospel is, and it was very encouraging to see him trying to steer them in the right direction. He will most definitely run into flack for that down the road.

In Acts 16, the prison guard’s entire family believes in Christ and is saved, and my Grandpa also mentioned how there is no greater joy than having your family believe in Christ and seek after Him as well. I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to have parents, and grandparents who are all seeking after Christ, and who aren’t afraid to point out what isn’t truth, and then point you to where it is in the Bible. It’s such a blessing when they also encourage you to dig down yourself and come up with truth based on biblical principle and not on conclusions that have no biblical basis.

I can only hope and pray that my family turns out as well as my grandparents family and my parents family. I’ve got an advantage because of their example, and because I was surrounded by biblical conversations. It just emphasizes how important family is. When you have a strong family, and parents that are striving to become more like Christ, you can’t really help doing the same thing yourself. I’ll say it again, I am incredibly blessed to have a strong Christian mother, a strong Christian father, and strong Christian grandparents. You can see how many bad examples there are out there, and look where the world is headed.

Fifty years is a long time to be married, and they’ve been the best examples that anyone could ask for for every one of them. Just ask my Dad! I can only hope and pray I turn out the same way! So, thank you Nana and Papa for the example you’ve been!

I can also hope that I’m in as good shape as my grandpa is in when I’m seventy-three. He still climbs mountains with us!

I’ve spent the past twenty minutes or so trying to figure out how to do this next post. I’m not sure if that’s because I have too much to say or nothing at all to say, so hopefully this post will come across with at least some meaning.

This past weekend I took an almost random (okay, it was planned) drive out to Colorado with several friends from Church. We went out to see a musical that my parents and brother were in (Annie Get Your Gun), and they were amazing by the way. You missed out. Anyway, Travis (younger-older roommate) and I could only go if we both worked on our way out there.

So, on Friday morning at around 4am we begin our journal into the unknown… which turned out to be a long drive through Utah… Utah is huge by the way…. and there’s nothing there… Fridays are normally a busy day at work for me, so I’m prepared with phone and laptop in hand and planning to be working constantly. It turns out I receive only a tenth the amount of e-mails that I normally get, and my phone (which was forwarded to my cell phone) didn’t ring a single time. This turned a day of what I thought was going to be a day of hectic working in the car into a day of great conversations, laughing, and a desperate attempt to drive through Vegas as quickly as possible…. I hate that place…

Anyway, fast-forward eighteen hours and we’re in Colorado, got 30mpg on the way, and spent far less on gas than we had planned for. We say hi to everyone, eat some amazing taco soup my mom had made for us all, talk for awhile, and then head off to sleep.

Oh! I almost left out a gigantic detail. The day before we left, my brother John and another friend (Mrs. Pitts) had flown into Denver and were driving up (yes, up) to my parents house. It was snowing, and the road was obviously very slippery. They were going around a corner a little too fast, and the car starts to swerve. It serves a little too much, and they end up driving straight off the curvy road and off the extremely steep hill next door. The car does a little gymnastics and then stops at the bottom of the hill where they both realize everyone is okay and immediately start laughing. So now the car is at the bottom of a twenty foot drop, and they’re both perfectly fine. No scrapes, no bumps, no bruises, no nothing. Oh! And they got the extra rental car insurance, too, so they pretty much just walked away without worrying about a thing. When I think about the sovereignty of God from now on, I think this instance is going to pop into my mind.

Fast forward again to Saturday morning. It’s our first day in Colorado, and we immediately head out to snowboard. Travis and Susannah had borrowed snowboards, and I had one that I could use, so it was basically free. Plus, it had snowed three feet of fresh snow in the three days leading up to this, and it was sunny and 32 degrees…. basically the most perfect snowboarding day that you could ask for. It just happened to fall on the day after we had driven eighteen hours to get there…. hmm…. God +2

After the great day of snowboarding (because of which Susannah and Travis are now master snowboarders), we head down to Salida to see the play. But Wait! There’s a catch. Mrs. Pitts had to borrow my dad’s truck to catch her flight at the airport (remember how the rental car had a run in with the ground?), and we were using the other car, so my Mom had to borrow Travis’ car (which we drove to CO) to get herself to the play. On our way down the mountain, we all get text messages that say “car won’t start”. The first thing that pops into my mind is the play, but then I realize, “how are we going to get home?” John responds with a solution, and the car starts right up! Problem solved, right? No…. it’s not.

Ten minutes later, my mom calls because she’s stuck in the driveway. That three feet of snow was starting to melt, and snowy, muddy, driveways on a hill don’t really like to let cars drive off of them. Soooo, my dad starts calling around to see if he can get her a ride to the theatre (seeing as she’s playing the starring role, and the play starts in an hour and a half), but no one answers their phone. We’re just about to head her direction to pick her up (which is forty-five minutes away) when she calls saying that she was able to get out of the driveway. There wasn’t much left of the driveway when she was finished. Here’s where we all breathe a sigh of relief.

Next, we get to the playhouse, drop off my dad and brother so they can get ready, and head off to get some pizza. This is where John’s phone rings again. It’s my mom, and the car that we had just driven 999 miles without any problems had overheated. Now it’s an hour and fifteen minutes until the play starts and the starring role is thirty minutes away with a broken car (that we have to drive home). My dad makes a few calls and gets her a ride to theatre, so the problem is solved temporarily. She finally gets there 25 minutes before the play is supposed to start, gets ready, we sit down, and off they go. For all of you who have never seen my mom, dad, and brother act, you’re missing out. Oh, and it’s a musical, so of course they were all singing, too.

The play ends, but the night isn’t over yet. We drive thirty minutes and come across our poor car which had so faithfully and fearlessly brought us out to Colorado. It starts right up, and seems to be running perfectly fine. There’s water in the reservoir, and it runs without overheating as we watch it, so we start driving up the mountain where it promptly overheats again. We then coast back down to the bottom of the mountain and start looking around some more. We couldn’t find a hose, and we didn’t have any big containers, so we’re filling up the car’s radiator with several coke bottles that are now full of water. After we start the car, my dad notices water spewing out of the back of the engine. After all of that, it looks like a hose has just come loose. All we do is put the hose back on, tighten it, fill the radiator, and drive away with a perfect car. This, again, could have been much worse and is another really good example of the sovereignty of God.

Now, remember how the hose had come loose? It wouldn’t have come loose then if my mom hadn’t had a rough time trying to get the car out of the driveway. She wouldn’t have had trouble getting out the driveway if Mrs. Pitts hadn’t had to take the truck to the airport because the car she was in drove off a cliff. And if the hose hadn’t come lose that night, it would have come loose on our way back home on Monday leaving us stranded in that gigantic state called Utah where there is nothing but dirt and sun. Am I saying my brother driving off a cliff was meant to save us from getting stranded in the middle of the desert? Not really, but I am pointing out this really good example of how God works everything together according to his perfect plan (Romans 8:28).

So, we get home, everyone talks for awhile again, eats more amazing food that my mom made, and goes to sleep.

The next morning I wake up to three text messages and a missed call from Lukas (older-older roommate). Apparently he’s in Colorado with his sister Cassia (we tried to get both of them to come to Colorado with us in the first place), and 220 miles from Denver. He needs my parents address so he doesn’t end up in the middle of nowhere. Turns out he was just a few minutes from the exit he had to take when I called him back. He’s driven 1000 miles to surprise Susannah and Travis by showing up in Colorado.

A couple hours later, when they get there, I meet them out at the road (far from the house), and we run back and have a snowball fight outside the big window. This is where we ‘accidentally’ let some snowballs hit the window which make Travis and Susannah look outside and see that they had randomly shown up in Colorado when they said that they couldn’t come in the first place! Needless to say, they were both surprised.

The rest of the day is filled with very good conversations, most of which were Christ-centered. It’s great when you have good friends, and almost every conversation that you have with them is centered around Christ and your relationship with Him. I can’t tell you how great it is to have friends that really do display Christlike character. When that’s the case, you can’t help but grow spiritually in Christ.

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling (1 Peter 4:8-9).”

When we’re selfless in our conversations and more focused on the person we’re speaking to, both people get so much more out of it, and Christ is glorified.

So… now the day is over, and we all go to bed again. The next day is Monday, and I have to work. Once again, a normally hectic day of the week turns into one of the slowest days I’ve had in a very long time which makes the fact that I have to work much less taxing on the trip. Around 1:30pm we begin on our return drive. This time we have two cars and five people, and of course, when you stick five people in a couple cars for eighteen hours, and most of them (excluding me) are selfless in their conversations, you come out on the other side knowing each other better, with strengthened friendships, and in the case of Christians, a further renewed desire to glorify Christ in whatever you do.

This trip was a big lesson for me in the fact that God has everything planned out, and His plan is perfect and sufficient. It was also a realization of how incredibly, undeservedly, blessed I am to have the family and friends that I do. If you’re ever around them, you’ll realize how you can’t help but better reflect Christ when you’re finished. One of my new-found goals is to have the same effect on people that these people have on me, in good times, in okay times, and especially when everything is going wrong.

God knows what He’s doing, and I’m going to try my best not to let me selfishness and arrogance get in the way of that. The moral of this story is: go on a road-trip with some strong Christian friends, and you’ll probably come out on the other side learning a lot more than you thought.

Plus, you’ll get to see your amazing family act in a play