Zebra Ministries

Good morning Zebras,

After putting up yesterday’s post I wandered off into the kitchen to get some coffee.  Since it’s something I do every morning I rarely turn the lights on, so I didn’t notice there were ants everywhere until I felt them crawling on my arms.

Needless to say, I turned on the light and wiped out as much of their civilization as I could see.

The sad thing is, it never needed to get to that point.  I have been battling a very small number of ants in my office for a while, but since we have a pest service, I figured they couldn’t get out of control.  Sure, a few may have gotten in but that didn’t mean anything.

Unfortunately, that’s some people’s attitude about sin.  A few sins here and there don’t really mean anything, they are, after all, covered by the blood of Christ.  But that isn’t the attitude of the New Testament and just like my ants, ignoring small sins is a dangerous choice.

Under the title: Warning Against Deliberate Sin

Hebrews 10:26–31: If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.  Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?  For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”  It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

I love you Zebras, but Christians are fools if they think small sins don’t matter, (I actually had someone say this to me recently,) because Christ died to set us free from sin.  His life paid the penalty that should have been ours and His Spirit gives us the power to overcome.

Recently my sister called and asked, “What’s with putting the couch in the garage?”

I told her the couch was making it too easy for Gary to be lazy, to just come home and check out.  All day long he dies to self and tries to do his job in a way that honors God so when he gets home he wants some “Me time.”

I have tried to tell him there’s no “Me time.”  There’s just God’s time.  But I was battling the couch, so we both agreed it had to go.  Not just to the garage, but out of the house, because it was covered with “lazy memories.”  When we looked at it we didn’t see God, we saw our lazy flesh.

When I explained the situation to the Habitat guy who came to pick it up, he said it was the first time he had people donate furniture because it was too comfortable.  (Weirdly, his young assistant seemed to understand what I was saying.)

People have told me I’m too hard on myself when I apologize for behavior the world considers normal, but just like the couch, my standard is not the world’s it’s God’s.  And right now, I’m sitting here covered with ants because I was to lazy to deal with them earlier.

Love,

Jill

P.S. This is just a picture of a carpenter ant up close.  Isn’t it weird how something so “innocent” can cease to look harmless when seen from a different point of view?