Oh how we love these words, “The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right, and his ears are open to their prayers.”
We don’t really appreciate the second part of the verse, “But the Lord turns his face against those who do evil.”
It’s not comfortable. It’s not cozy.
It’s bone chilling. It’s frightening.
And in our culture today, we’re not supposed to be frightened by God.
Except that He gave us this warning through the pen of Peter for a reason. He sent us these words so we who are believers would make the right choices.
The thing is, we have come to think evil is murder and mayhem, raping and pillaging. Evil includes those, but it also includes gossip and lying – even little white ones, gluttony and lust, greed and worshipping other gods – including family and self and many others we think of as “little” sins.
God is utterly holy. There is no sin that is little enough to breach that holiness to be in His presence.
There is no sin
that is not evil
to God.
The FABULOUS good news is that God will forgive all those sins. He will cast them as far as east is from the west when we recognize our wrongs as sin and agree with Him that they are wrong and against Him. As we begin that turn away from that sin, He drops that hefty weight into the Sea of Forgetfulness, never to be seen or heard from again.
In that fraction of a nanosecond, God’s eyes return to watching over us and His ears are again attuned to our prayers.
Sin is extremely serious. It takes our eyes off the One who made us and saved us. It causes us to place ourselves on the throne of life instead of the One who carved out the oceans.
We must begin to take it as seriously as He does. We must search ourselves and find every vestige of it. We must CONFESS (agree with God that it is wrong) and REPENT (stop doing it and turn toward God and His ways).
Today is a good day to check ourselves. All we have to do is ask God to show us any sin that exists in us so that we can confess and repent.
Then we can know the presence of Almighty God in our lives again.
Oh, yeah. And we do not go back to that sin, no matter tasty that morsel of gossip or the ‘necessity’ to tell the little white lie for someone’s good might be.
Choose God. Every time.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
