JR. Forasteros - February 17, 2013
The Runaround
We struggle to conquer Sin in our lives because we treat Sin as a list of dos and don'ts. But Sin is the bending of our hearts away from God. That changes how we approach Sin and how we find freedom.
From Series: "Venom"
Everyone knows the world isn't as it should be. There's a sickness deep within us, a rot in the human heart. The Bible calls that rot Sin, and even though no one likes to talk about Sin, we can't escape its reality. A snake once whispered to us that we could be like God. We believed that lie, and the venom of Sin has been killing us ever since. But God will not abandon us. Why do we talk about sin? Because then we get to talk about how God rescues us from Sin. After we tried to become like God, God became like us, to become our Sin, to save us. Join us the six Sundays of Lent (February 17-March 24) as we explore what Sin is and how God saves us!
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Today’s about Ghost stories. Though they appear in many forms, the quintessential ghost story involves the spirit of a dead person who’s stayed around (usually a haunted house) because they have unfinished business. Maybe they have to deliver a message or ensure proper burial or get revenge. Whatever the case, once their business is complete, they leave into the afterlife.
Unlike our previous two monsters, today we’re not ghosts. Rather, to quote Peter Rollins,
We are the haunted houses. — Peter Rollins
We move through life collecting hurts, wounds and scars, evidence of pain inflicted on us by other people. Some may be slight, exaggerated in our heads – maybe someone who cuts us off or says something cruel or who causes us harm by accident. Others could be huge, life-altering. A spouse who left. An abuser. And there’s a whole range of hurts between.
Whatever their source, however legitimate or not, these people, these hurts don’t just exit our lives.
We carry them around with us, in our heads and in our souls. They haunt us, returning again and again out of the ether to drag us through the past, to relive history, to reopen old wounds.
The problem is we don’t know what these ghosts want. We don’t know how to resolve their business and get them to leave us. We can’t escape their haunting – especially if the person who hurt you is still a part of your life.
