 Are You on the Beanbag?
Communion Meditation - Dan Conder - August 27, 2006
James 4:7-8
So give yourselves completely to God. Stand against the devil, and the devil will run from you. Come near to God, and God will come near to you. Sinners, clean sin out of your lives. You who are trying to follow God and the world at the same time, make your thinking pure.
Every day we live, we have a choice to do what is right or what is wrong.
 I have an old dog who has kind of head strong. We allow her to come in the house only if she stays on her bean bag. Well she starts out obeying pretty well, but by morning, we find her not totally on the bean bag. She may be only half on it or even just one paw touching the bean bag. In her mind this is technically on the bean bag. Once it is brought to her attention, she quickly gets back on the bean bag.
This kind of reminded me this week of how much we are much like my dog. We start out the week on firm ground with Christ, but by the end of the week we are from where we should be.
Before Christ, we had no choice. Sin was our one and only route. All of our life was marked by unrighteousness. But once we came to the Cross and gave the Lord Jesus the right to rule our lives, we were granted a choice we never had before. Grace freed us from the requirement to serve sin, allowing us the opportunity to follow Christ’s directives voluntarily. So as long as we do this, we will not sin. But as soon as you give ground to the devil, he is ready to lure us into sin.
So what’s the take away? To stay on our bean bags until next Sunday or the Lord will punish us?
No, it is wanting to draw nearer to Christ so He will be nearer to us.
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