Flirting With Sin?
Ed Hurst writes, “Some people stumble into sin; some fall, some play around on the edges until they fall in; and others jump” [Ed Hurst with Dave and Neta Jackson, Overcoming Homosexuality, (Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Company, 1987), p. 86]. It is to those who are tempted to play around the edges that a brother from Canada recently wrote.
“Some of us at times flirt with sin. We think we can sin and get away with it, but it is like playing with matches and dynamite. We can play for a while, but in time, we get hurt.
Confusing?
Have you ever noticed something that seemed strange to you in the Bible? Have you ever been perplexed by the different tenses Scripture uses in describing salvation?
For one thing, we read in Ephesians 2:8,9: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not of works, so that no one can boast” (NIV). That sounds like it is all a done deal—salvation is a matter of the past.
Which Viewpoint is Yours?
Two shoe salesmen were sent to Africa to open up a new market. Three days after their arrival, the first salesman sent a cablegram: “Returning home on next plane. Can’t sell shoes here. Everybody goes barefoot.”
Nothing was heard from the second salesman for about two weeks. And then there came a fat airmail envelope with this message for the home office. “Fifty orders enclosed. Prospects unlimited. Nobody here has shoes!”
Points to Ponder
"A student once asked the president of his school if there was a course he could take that was shorter than the one prescribed. 'Oh yes,' replied the president, 'but it depends on what you want to be. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years, but when He wants to make a squash, it only takes six months." [Miles J. Stanford, Principles of Spiritual Growth, quoted in Charles Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart And 1,501 Other Stories, (Nashville: Word Publishing, Inc., 1998), p. 173]
"The wise man adjusts himself to the Bible, but the fool adjusts the Bible to himself." [Our Daily Bread, (September 10, 1978)]
"Of the estimated 332,578 male adults and adolescents living with HIV/AIDS, 60% were MSM [male to male sexual contact] 19% were IDUs [intravenous drug users], 13% were exposed through heterosexual contact, and 7% were MSM who were also IDUs." [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, 2004. Vol. 16. (Atlanta: US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2005), p. 7]
"Homosexuality...is one of the results of the Fall, just as every other proclivity to sin is.... There is no such separate condition as homosexuality--just sinners with different forms of sexual weakness and different degrees of identity confusion.... Homosexuals are men and women like the rest of us, and all of us sinners are either wrestling with or giving in to our particular sexual vulnerabilities." [Dr. John White, Eros Redeemed: Breaking the Stranglehold of Sexual Sin, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), p. 151]
"It is as true of Christians as it is of Christ,--there can be no life without death, there can be no sweet without bitter, there can be no crown without a cross." [J. C. Ryle, "John," Expository Thoughts on the Gospels II, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, n.d.), p. 167]
