Monday, October 8, 2012

Milestones

We often talk about, or hear others talk about, milestones... mile-markers that can be looked back on through our life in an attempt to measure growth. It's often a tactic we, as Christians, will employ in order to make it easier to see how God has worked in our lives and changed us, how He has worked through us from the moment of our redemption through our acceptance of Jesus, and how our spiritual life has matured. It's a wonderful practice, and a great encouragement in the times that God feels distant, or we find ourselves struggling.
Yesterday, as I was thinking over the first chapter of Nate Larkin's Samson and the Pirate Monks, I noticed something else though... the same milestones and markers are there in our descent to sin. As Larkin details his own dealings with lust and sexual sin, he shows the moments that decisions are made and deceptive schemes are hatched. His own experience is so readily transposed no matter the nature of one's sin and at the moment of brutal honesty in looking at our own sin, we easily recognize the stops we made along the way. In the same way that you do not become a mature Christian overnight, you also do not become an adulterer. It is a pattern of action and thoughts... choices made at certain stops along the path. The difference between a person growing in the love of God, and one struggling in the grip of sin is very small... It is, or should be, humbling to remember, as we look on others who are struggling that the only thing different between the two is a simple choice. I could have chosen differently, at numerous stops along my path, and I shudder to think what my life would look like today. By the grace of God, and only by His actions through me am I who I am. And even still, I am a moment by moment choice away from headed straight down the same path. It's my prayer that by knowing and recognizing both the milestones along the upward slope and the downward slope and by relying on the love of God, that I can continue living in a pattern of obedience, and growth.

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