I Have A Life Threatening Illness
Tuesday, January 18, 2011 Posted by Pastor Fred Wolfe
It's true.
I'm sick.
I'm not going to make it, and I'm not sure how much longer I have.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was a teenager, but I was born with it. I can't tell you how many things I have taken in the hopes that I would be cured. Nothing has worked. I suppose I have given up. My hair has begun to fall out, and I seem to need more and more sleep. The pain is beginning to take over my joints. It's really no fun.
My wonderful wife knew I was sick, but she decided to marry me anyway. After all, she had it too. Maybe we thought we could lean on each other. Whatever the reason, she has been a help and support for me in more ways than I can describe. She's a saint.
Like a dagger in the heart, the pain of realizing I have passed it on to all of my children has wrenched my soul. Into the early morning I have prayed for them, but their symptoms are evident, and I see them becoming more and more aware of them everyday.
To many, this might seem like a unmanageable burden, and they would be right. It's weight has crushed my soul and buried my hopes and dreams of leaving my mark on this earth. It has taken my children by the throat and chokes the life out of them as I right this. I am powerless to stop it. There is no doctor on earth that is it's match, no drug that alleviates it's ravaging. The sad thing is, I chose to infect myself.
Sin is a curse. A curse we are all under. It's terminal. It leads to death. We can't cure ourselves, though often we try. This is the self-inflicted disease I have, and apart from the grace of God, my prognosis would assuredly be eternal death.
I have bad news. You have it too. And it's going to kill you. It's not going to go away. Don't buy into the idea that time cancels it out. You are guilty, and your natural self will always get worse, not better.
People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
Turn around. Primarily, God is not bound to punish sin. He is bound to destroy it.
Turn to Christ. See His perfection. See His Holiness. See His inability to make mistakes. See His Deity. See His Absolutely Perfect Love. Now be like Him.
You can't. That's why you need to stop lying to yourself about your abilities. You need to be honest about your basic desire to act apart from Holiness. Your attempts at wealth, fame, pleasure, self indulgence or even good works without faith are a slap in the face of the ultimate authority presiding over the universe. Your desire to sin means your life is in opposition to God, and therefore are the just object of His wrath. This indictment means that God cannot be just and good unless he condemns you to Hell. Eternal Hell. It's a heavy truth, but you need to know.
Jesus lived a perfect life, and being God, humbled Himself to live life as one of His own creations. He lived a perfectly Holy life in obedience to God the father so that He might be worthy to pay our sin debt to God. He died a horrible death, and what is worse, he literally became the sin of those He came to save. He became murder. He became theft. He became betrayal. He became blasphemy. He became child molestation. He became rape. He became sin. The sin His creation committed. Sins that made Him the object of wrath for God the Father. He died.
Death. It was the only way he could be both JUST and the JUSTIFIER of those who believe. He demanded the payment, and then paid the price Himself.
Now he commands all people everywhere to repent. So I plead with you, adjure you, demand from you, command you in the name of Christ, repent. Repent of your sins and believe the gospel. It is God's calling by the work of the Spirit that convicts us of our sin and misery, and enlightens us to the knowledge of this gospel, and changes our will and desires to persuade us to embrace this truth. It's one thing to try to stop sinning, it's another not to want to. Repent and believe, that you might be changed in this way, and experience the meaning of true healing.
When old companions, old lusts, and sins crowd in upon you, and when you feel that you are ready to sink, what can save you, sinking sinner ? This alone — I have a high priest in heaven, and he can support in the hour of affliction. This alone can give you peace—I have a high priest in heaven. When you are dying — when friends can do you no good — when sins rise up like spectres around your bed — what can give you peace ? This — "I have a high priest in heaven" --Robert Murray M'Cheyne
True repentance will entirely change you; the bias of your souls will be changed, then you will delight in God, in Christ, in His Law, and in His people. --George Whitefield
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