I’m a sinner. It’s pretty obvious if you pay any amount of attention to me. It’s so bad, that I feel guilty and ashamed, like God should not and will not accept me. But that’s just not true.

Last week, I wrote about the real reason you’re drowning in debt. It applies to much more than just debt. You see, you’re in debt because you are making something else, something you don’t have the money to buy, more important than God and his will. This is called idolatry. Pretty much every sin is a form of idolatry, because in order to commit a sin, you have to shove God aside.

This has become something drilled into my mind lately because, as I said in last week’s post, I’m reading Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart. This book has really been convicting the heck outta me while putting my sin in a different light.

Think about sin like this: God is our bridegroom, we are his bride. He loves us dearly and is (rightfully) jealous when we put other things before him. (Yes, he’s jealous.) When we sin, we’re being unfaithful spouses. We’re deciding that we don’t want the love that God is offering, but instead we want the pleasure that something else promises to give us. Or we’re deciding that God’s love isn’t enough, so we want to add something to it. That is essentially polygamy. What would you do if you caught your spouse on a date with someone else? And what if you went up to your spouse and asked him or her “what are you doing?” and they nonchalantly replied, “I’m on a date. Don’t worry, I still love you, but I also love this other person.”? That’s insane! I personally would not stand for that, and neither does God. There is no room for other gods on God’s throne.

Relentless

But, as Kyle Idleman puts it in the book I already mentioned, “The jealousy of God is demonstrated not just in the offense he takes at our idolatry, but in his pursuit of our hearts.” God isn’t simply going to let sin steal you from him. He loves you! He really really really does.

¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (ESV)

His love is boundless and there’s nothing that can separate us from that love. Francis Thompson wrote a poem called “The Hound of Heaven” in which he wrote about God’s relentless pursuit of him. You see, Francis had health, money, and opium addiction problems, so, as the God’s at War states, “he kept expecting to find that God had turned his face away in disgust… Yet somehow, in the deepest of Thompson’s suffering, there was always the sense of God’s presence, God coming after him, God attempting to rescue him from himself.”

No matter how much you sin, God is still relentlessly trying to win you back. #Godislove Click To Tweet

This is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions. No other religion has a god that pursues people like our God. As the books states, “This is God who, when turned down, ignored, rejected – even violently, even blasphemously – finds a new way to express his love and issue the invitation.”

Yes, you have sinned horrifically against God. Repent from that sin. Don’t wallow in pity and shame at your disgusting inability to obey God. Turn toward God and you’ll find his arms wide open, ready to embrace you and welcome you back!

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