GraceWay Baptist Church Serving Kiowa-Serving Christ

I know I have talked a lot about the sin of “busyness” and the damage it causes in the lives of Christians, but there is another sin that is just as debilitating and far more pervasive. It is the sin of not hating sin, “...the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful (Mark 4:19, NIV).”

I must admit that lately I have somehow become less vigilant about sin; I have become lackadaisical in my attitude toward sin and have knowingly or unknowingly lowered the bar of what is acceptable in my life. I don’t remember the day or exact time of this recent decline or what event may have triggered it. Perhaps I have been in the desert all along and just didn’t realize it.

Last May I was in a similar place (Losing Fellowship with God) when I received an email of insight and encouragement from Tom Horner of Parker, “As believers we are Pilgrims. We are on a sojourn in this fallen world. This means we will go through many valleys, deserts, and climb too many mountaintops in our lifetime. Those who believe God wants them to stay on the mountaintop, believing it is the measure of a vital spirituality and close walk with God, are committing a presumptuous sin. They are also unwittingly staying in a state of spiritual, arrested development.” Horner went on to say “if you find yourself in the desert, it does not automatically mean that sin brought you there.” But, it is here that I will agree to disagree with Horner.

I believe that many of us end up in the desert or remain in the desert because we do not hate sin enough. We are there, for the most part, because we don’t revile the thoughts and actions that God reviles. We have consciously or unconsciously chosen to live a life of mediocrity, chosen that which is expedient or convenient over that which is righteous. But whatever the reason, what is bad about the desert is fixed by what is right about the desert (I think Bill Clinton said something like that at one time about America).

The desert is a place that is devoid of distractions; it is a place where the attitudes of man are sharply contrasted by the attitude of God; it is a place where one chooses to depend on God and the fruits of righteousness or to depend on the world and the fruits of sin.

The desert is an excellent place to start over, it is an excellent place to make a stand, an excellent place to say “no” to what we know is wrong and say “yes” to what we know is right.

I have found that no matter how difficult life becomes for a believer there is always the family of believers who exhort and encourage us to move beyond that “state of spiritual, arrested development” to that state where we are, once again, ascending the mountaintop.