A Step Away

People love a scandal. They love the juiciness of stories and gossip. So, in what I'm about to tell you, my desire is not to gossip or tear someone down.

He was a great worship leader. He sang really well, picked very good songs, and was very organized, as far as I could see. He even spoke some really intense stuff about our faith sometimes. From the outside, Larry was pretty much what every senior pastor wants in a worship leader. Now, Larry isn't really his name, but for the sake of privacy, I'll hold back on his real name.

The fact is this: after some years of leading worship at the church I belong to, it was discovered that Larry was having an affair. Memory fails me on some of the details, but the main point I'm trying to get to is this:

We are never more than a step away from the worst sin we could think of.

Granted, I'm not sure what Larry's spiritual walk looked like, but I'm fairly sure that he had a desire to follow God. If this is the case, that means even someone who pursues God can fall into something very dark.

Don't believe me?

Fine. Let's take a more familiar example - David. That's right. King David. As in "guy-after-God's-own-heart David. This is a guy who is inspired to worship God while he's running for his life from the current king. It's safe to say that David was pretty much very in tune with who God was on a very personal level. So what's the problem?

David slept with someone who wasn't his wife and then killed her husband once he finds out that she's preggo. To loosely quote Matt Chandler, "It sounds like an episode of Jerry Springer." Let me be clear:

This is some twisted darkness that David's landed in.

There's also the example of the mob who crucified Jesus. Essentially, the people who worshiped Christ when He came into Jerusalem were most likely the same people who ended up yelling bloody murder three days later.

So here's my point in all of this: I know someone who constantly used to say stuff like, "I would never stoop down to that level. The guy who committed that sin is a fool." In other words, he thought he was spiritually good enough to resist those sins.

Listen to me: it is the pure grace of God that you are not a murderer or worse.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

So, on that note, let us not boast in our ability to resist sin or rise above circumstances, but let us daily be humbly thankful for the fact that God has placed us where we are. 

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