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Luís Alberto Alves
How many times do we not have the courage to take David's attitude and pray to the Lord sincerely asking for forgiveness regarding our sins. Meditate on verse 5 of Psalm 32: “I confessed my sin to you, and I did not cover up my iniquity. I said: I will confess my transgressions to the Lord; and you forgave the evil of my sin. (Saddle.)".
I remind brothers and sisters that it is a brave thing to go into your room, alone, and pour out all the dirt that lived inside your heart, your soul, mind and spirit. Talk, that's right, talk to God and present before Him the mistakes you made and still insist on making.
None of us are saints. The argument that we do not make mistakes, we do not make mistakes, we are people above suspicion is false. All of this is false. Which man, when he sees a woman with a beautiful face, body, and very elegant, doesn't look away from her for a few seconds? For fractions of seconds, don't dirty thoughts about that person cross your mind?
Popular
How many women, when they come across a man with a well-toned body in a gym, the famous “six-pack abs”, handsome, standing next to a car worth millions, don't let their thoughts wander for seconds when comparing their husband or fiancé, who walks of a popular car, and the current account only experiences flashes of green color? Imagine that that man could give you a credit card for R$20,000 or R$50,000, with him paying the bill every month?
The popular saying says that the heart is an unknown land. Truly, our heart is a master at creating proposals that, if implemented, will lead a man or woman to the abyss. He turns wrong into right and vice versa. At the height of distress, our heart sends a message to the brain stating that it is good. That it is worth investing in this proposal.
The mistake will never manifest itself as something bad. Never! Adultery will present itself as just a distraction, just to bring satisfaction and will never be discovered. It is on this leaky boat that millions of men and women embark. They imagine that this betrayal will never come to light. Jesus Christ said that “there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be discovered.”
Soul
The problem is that the garbage of sin accumulates inside us. And trash contains dirt and this causes damage to the spirit, to the soul. Try going for a long time without going to the bathroom to pee or poop. Soon you will feel sick. Even walking will be difficult. The body begins to feel the impact that that dirt needs to be expelled.
The same thing happens with sin. A person committed to God's commandments and has fear of the Lord cannot get used to sin. She is out of place. Out of the presence of Christ. The weight of sin bothers the mind, the heart is saddened, because something bad is still present and needs to leave within us.
Few people have the sensitivity to close the door of their room and alone expose before the Lord all the mistakes they have made and cry out for His forgiveness. Many imagine that God's wrath will consume them in seconds and leave worse than when they entered that place. Of course, every action has a reaction. The Lord forgives, but we need to bear the consequences of our error.
Pity
He is the same as the murderer, the author of a death that the police determine to be unknown. God will forgive, but he needs to go to court to pay for this crime. Do not imagine that confession before the Lord is enough to solve the problem. This person took someone's life and before society he needs punishment. Justice, through a jury trial, will determine what the sentence will be.
Before meeting Jesus Christ, Saul was complicit in the deaths of many Christians. He took pleasure in seeing a family that worshiped the Lord being tortured and dying, as occurred in the scene where Estevão lost his life under several stones. Saul never intervened to prevent that martyrdom. It was so bad that Ananias, when he received the mission to speak about Jesus Christ to Saul, who later became Paul, was afraid.
Ananias told the Lord that Saul was a bad person who persecuted Christians. I imagine that Ananias, when he was before Saul, may have been afraid of ending up in prison and dying under torture. The first cults Paul attended, people were afraid of him. They imagined it was just a pretense and a strategy to arrest them and end their lives.
Blind
But Paul's encounter with God was intense. I believe that in the three days he was blind, he meditated on all the wrong actions he had taken. Of having committed countless sins against God, thinking he was doing right. Generally the sinner imagines that he is not doing anything wrong. In his view, everything is fine. The others are the ones who see an error, where in their opinion something is correct.
Ask the husband who cheats on his wife or the woman who cheats on her husband if they think adultery is wrong. Some even justify it by saying that it is just an adventure and it will soon come to an end and everything will end well. In the thief's mind, stealing millions from a bank is not wrong, because banks are professional loan sharks, charging countless fees from their customers, without any type of refund.
But everything has consequences. David, after his conversation with the prophet Nathan, sent by God to warn him about his attitude of ordering the death of Uriah, the husband of his lover Bathsheba, would bring consequences. When he came to his senses and analyzed the size of the mistake he had made. He was honest with God. The Lord forgave him, but warned him that he would have to face the consequences.
Throne
God did not abandon David. He continued beside him. He went through bad times to the point of seeing his own son Absalom conspire to try to remove the throne from Israel. Previously, Absalom killed his brother Amnon, David's firstborn son. Another disappointment was seeing Amnon rape his sister Tamar. But why did all these tragedies happen to David? The devil is a master of illusion. He will never warn about the harm that sin will cause.
It just suggests that something is good and one should try it. How many drug addicts have entered the hell of drug addiction because they decided to smoke a marijuana cigarette or snort a little cocaine during a party, just to relax and not disappoint their friends? They got stuck and entered a road full of potholes, losing their jobs and even their families.
Any act we commit results in consequences. In life we are responsible for our mistakes. It is childish to imagine that before God, He will see the transgressions we commit and everything will have no effect. Yes, the Lord erases our sins, but the effects remain and we will have to bear them. It's not the same on social media where someone deletes the post that caused controversy and everything is ok.
Files
Therefore, every Christian, whether man or woman, needs to think hard about every action he takes. In every word that comes out of his mouth, in every gesture he takes with anyone. Words cause wounds and many of them take years to heal. Some never leave the mind of those who were offended. It's the same as the Public Security file. The convict served his sentence and was released from jail. But the information remains in the files that he was once in the prison system.
If he has made a mistake, he confesses his sins to God. Be careful who you talk to. Not everyone is prepared to hear about their mistakes, especially those that could cause a series of disturbances. Many of them, only God has the structure to listen to you and forgive you. The Lord will prepare you to bear the weight of the consequences. You won't be alone.
The important thing is to take the attitude of opening yourself before the Lord. Present everything bad you did that displeased Him. But do it sincerely. Don't lie or be false to God. The Lord knows what's going on inside your mind. Open the game and ask that the Lord's mercy be upon you and that you be blessed. In this way, your soul will be freed from the prisons where the devil once imprisoned you. It is the way to take possession of the blessings of the Lord. They had not arrived yet, because the dirt of sin prevented them. Have a great month.
Luís Alberto Alves is a pastor.
