Though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals and reptiles.
Therefore, God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.     Romans 1:21-24 HCSB

As Christians we are to love what Jesus loves and hate what Jesus hates. We are to be followers of Christ, meaning that we strive our best to imitate Him in every way. But, He doesn’t force us to do this. He gives us free will.

I often remind you of the old saying, “Sin will take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay and cost you more than you wanted to pay.” Now, you’d think a loving God would not allow us to sin, right? Well, my pastor often says that all those times in the Bible when it says, “Thou shall not” that this is a loving God telling His children, “Don’t hurt yourself.” God certainly doesn’t want us to sin, He made us to be in close fellowship with Him. He wants us to love Him and obey Him, but he gives us a choice. He allows us to sin as little or as much as we want. As we read in Romans 1, however, He will eventually just give us over to what we want. Be very careful.

The devil is right there ready to bust through the door when you crack it to let sin in. He will lie to you and tell you things like, “God will just overlook that sin.” He may tell you that you are not hurting anyone.

We can foolishly think that pornography doesn’t hurt anyone, right? Wrong. You may think, “Well, it has already been made so what’s it gonna hurt if I look at it.” Well, studies show that it hurts a great deal. The viewer is more likely to become more detached socially and be unsatisfied with normal sexual relations. It can destroy marriages and wreck families. It also leads to a craving for more and more degradation to satisfy the viewers desires.

Anger is not a sin, it’s an emotion, right? It’s not a sin to be angry, but the Bible does deal with anger. Ephesians 4:26 tells us to be angry and not to sin, don’t let the sun go down on our anger. Handle it quickly and move it out of the way. The devil will tell you to get angry and allow that anger to take control. Don’t listen to him.

Lying is one that we often think doesn’t really hurt anyone, but we are told that lying is an abomination to the Lord in Proverbs 12:22. Be very careful because that “little lie” can not only hurt feelings of those you love, but it can grieve the Holy Spirit. When the Bible tells you something is an abomination to the Lord, you better stay far away from it.

Now I could go on listing sins that we commit that we think don’t really hurt anyone else, but the bottom line is that sin is destructive. It can not only destroy the sinner, but can destroy relationships. There is no little sin or big sin, there is just sin.

Our behavior is kind of like a snowball when you think about it. If you start with Jesus as your foundation and you keep piling on things like prayer, Bible study, the fruits of the Spirit, your faith will grow.

But if you start with a foundation of any type of sin, be it anger, lying, pornography, adultery, slander, you name it, it too will grow. One lie adds to another lie, the same is true for all these other sins. The more we sin, the more we want to and before you know it you have this huge snowball with sin as your foundation. You must be very careful, because at some point God will just give you over to it.

If you have been hesitating to follow Christ because you think He may stop you from doing whatever it is that you want to do, you are wrong. He is willing to let you do whatever you want to do.  But, following Him will change what you want to do for the better. You will no longer want any part of sin. You won’t be perfect, but you will be convicted when you do sin and you will want to repent and be forgiven. And if you repent, He will forgive you (1 John 1:9)

Surrender to God today, or don’t , the choice is yours. You can truly do whatever you want to do.

Have a great day!