“What your were actually doing was playing church and that is one of the most serious sins you can commit because God will not be mocked.”
RG
For me, I never really liked hearing he truth especially if it meant that I was wrong, but to be honest I always appreciated it more than you can know and I wish there were more people in my past life that cared enough about me to tell me the truth. I have always known that for me to change and be successful that someone just needed to be honest with me and tell me the way it is. I have a feeling that I am not alone in this. When the pastor told me that I was not only sinning, but that I was sinning against God and the Holy Spirit I was stricken with the sickest feeling in the world. The Bible says “We know that we have come to know Him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” (1John 2:3-6). This hit home for me because it became painfully aware to me that each and every time I stood in church, or proclaimed to be a Christ follower and then went home and sinned against my wife or my kids that I was sinning against God and his laws (and in some cases the covenant that He made with us). God is very clear in the Bible that he will not be mocked and that the consequences for such are dire (Galatians 6:7-8). When you stand up in church, worship the one true God and then knowingly return home to sin, play house, put the word of God on your body in tattoos as if you are righteous and aren’t, there will be a reckoning. Paul warns us of this in the entire book of romans but specifically in Romans 1:18-32. Paul is educating the church that God no longer comes to wipe out civilizations like He did in the flood or the days of Sodom and Gomorrah because He sent his Son to take away our sins and die on the cross for those sins (Romans 5:8, John 3:16-17) and by doing so shows us His unmatched grace and mercy for mankind. But there are still consequences to our actions and instead of God wiping us off this planet, He gives us signs, sends people to warn us, and gives us time and grace to repent. But when we do not, eventually He turns us over to that sin and our behavior that He knows we love more than Him. Tony Evans gives us the best sermon I have ever heard on this here. We cannot serve two masters and the bible says we either love (and serve) God or we love the world and hate God (Matthew 6:24, 1 John 2:15-17, James 4:4-8). This is a hard truth because we justify this everyday because of “feelings”, loneliness, lack of money, to get ahead, “it feels good”, “we deserve better”, “God loves me just the way I am”, and fill in the blank with your own justification here____________. The question might be to yourself, who do you serve? God or your fears, idols and fleshly desires. Are you too playing church without understanding the truth about what that means?
Summary
So in summary what I was made painfully aware of was that it is impossible to serve God and commit unrepentant sin at the same time by “playing church” every week. By doing so I was opening the door to unbelievable spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:10-18) and teaching those around me that God entrusted me to lead, how to sin in the same way or worse. This is why generational curses exist (Exodus 34:7) until someone steps back, repents and shows his family a new way to live; by putting God first (Matthew 6:33). I had someone tell me the other day that “this is how it was for me when my family got divorced and I hated it!”. They told me this in the context of how it shaped and wrecked their childhood and family memories and yet were literally doing (and condoning) the same exact thing to their family now. Generational curses are real and most of the time we cant even see them because “this is just the way it has to be”. God has a better way. He says that we must die to self and our desires to be more like Jesus (Luke 9-23, Matthew 16:24, Romans 8:13-14, Romans 12:1, Galatians 2:20, Galatians 5:19–21, and many more….) or otherwise we are serving the world and not God. I had to learn that hard way that this leads to pain, heartbreak, destruction, and adds to things that our children and their children to the 3rd generation will suffer for. The question is, can you set aside your desires for the good of your children and the sole purpose of hearing “well done my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21)? Are you more interested in loving God or the world (John 4:15). I had to come to the sad realization that my sin and my life was causing my kids to stumble (and thus make my children’s children stumble as well) and God says “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15) and I will break every generational curse that exists in my family even if I didn’t create it (Mathew 19:26). God says that Love covers all sin (1 Peter 4:8) and my prayer for everyone this is stuck in this mess to do the same and to watch watch God can do!
