Face it we’re all monsters of iniquity!

The hardest thing for humans to say are these four words:

I AM A SINNER!

Its funny because it doesn’t get any easier once you become a Christian.  First of all, one who doesn’t want to admit that he is a sinner cannot be a Christian because those go hand in hand.  Jesus said that is exactly why he came on this earth.

Mark 2:17 says: And hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus doesn’t save those who don’t think they need to be saved.  He saves those who know they need to be saved.

But it doesn’t stop here.  I believe that as Christians, now we need to work hard to keep reminding ourselves that we are such horrible sinners.  We should be constantly reminding ourselves about what Christ has done for us, in every step of our lives, every decision we make, and before we engage in any argument! Paul believed this!

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

and

1 Timothy 1:15 ^“It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.”

This isn’t false humility here.  This is a man who understood the battle that goes on inside our hearts everyday, every moment. I believe that the hardest thing for a human to say is “I was wrong”, or “I sinned”. If we constantly remind ourselves in our everyday lives that we are not perfect, that we’re not even close to perfection, then we will fight less, we will hate less, and eventually we will sin less, and on the contrary we will love people more, we will encourage more, and we will love God more!  If only we would walk through each day, constantly thinking of what horrible sinners we are (and what Christ has done for us), it would be so much easier for us to grow spiritually!

I once shared these thoughts with some friends, and they told me, how depressing that would be walking around like that, because “it makes the person look horrible!” This is my exact point, the bigger the sinners we are, the bigger the savior Christ is. That should be our goal in life, to humble ourselves before an immense and everlasting God, to glorify God more,  by exalting him and diminishing us!

This train of thought will also help us when another believer comes to us with a concern about sin in our lives, whether we have a continual sin we are committing, or if it’s just a one time thing. When they come to us our first thought, wont be “hey! why are you taking out this small little toothpick from my eye, when you have an Oak tree in yours!”. Instead as my pastor Rick Holland would say, our answer to the confrontation will be “Is that your only concern? Is that the only sin you see? because there’s a whole lot more than that, you see only the tip of the iceberg!”

So please say it with me,

I AM A MONSTER OF INIQUITY!

Blood Filled Hands

What in the world does “Blood Filled Hands” mean?

It all started when I was in Junior High school in Rome, Italy. There were zero Christians in my whole school of over one thousand people.  There I was, a tall and skinny little kid who knew the gospel, but never once shared with anyone the good news I had.

Now as a Christian, I knew that all my friends needed to hear about Jesus and the Bible, but as a human I wanted to be liked and to fit in.

Let’s fast-forward four years now.  I am a senior in High school in America, in the city of Bradenton, Florida. I dislike going to church anymore and the only reason I act like a Christian at least when I am at home, is because of my great love for my father. I am really into soccer and somehow I get a school in a small city in Oklahoma to offer me a scholarship.  At the same time, my dad tells me about this Bible school in Italy where you take 10 weeks to read the whole bible and evangelize.

For some reason, probably because of wanting to please my dad and to be able to see my Italian friends I decided to go to the Bible school. I also had never read through the whole Bible and it had been years since I had opened the Bible to read it from my own choosing.  I never evangelized before and didn’t really know how to do it.   So I decided. I packed my bags and I was on a plane to Italy.

Slowly as I read through the Bible I was astonished!  God is so sovereign in everything.  In order to do anything in this life a man needs to depend on God.  But then it came: Ezekiel 3:18.  The reading of this verse changed my life.

18“When I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.”

Does this include my junior high friends?  Does this include a man I start a conversation with on the bus?  Does this include my neighbor?

Many Christians are walking around with blood filled hands and they don’t even know it.

After I came to The Master’s College, I learned about how to study the bible and how important it is to stay fair to the passage and make sure we teach what the author intended.  It is clear that Ezekiel 3  is talking to the prophet, but if you read Romans 20:25-26 it says:

25“And now, behold, I know that all of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face.  26“Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.

We see here Paul using that same idea from Ezekiel.  Since Paul has preached the Kingdom, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, that he is innocent of the blood of men.

So there I was, 18, crying my eyes out.   That night I didn’t get much sleep at all, wondering about my junior high friends, wondering about all the people that I could have warned, but there was nothing I could do.

Only one thing I could do, and that was that i would never lose another chance again.  If it was possible and the opportunity arose , I would not leave a conversation with someone without them hearing the gospel.  And by God’s grace I still greatly desire to never miss an opportunity to share God’s wonderful news.

What about my junior high friends?

As soon as I had learned this, I prayed to God that He would forgive for not sharing the gospel with them, and I prayed that somehow He would send someone to share the gospel with them (I thought I would never see them again).  In 2008 Italy opened the Italian version of Facebook, and it boomed.  One by one my junior high friends joined facebook and slowly they all added me as a friend.   I didn’t want to just share the gospel on facebook as that could be potentially awkward.  Without me knowing, they had all decided to meet in October in front of our old school for old times sake.

Every October My father and Aurora Ministries organize a yearly FOCUS conference for the Italian church to learn more about the Word of God.  I had the privilege of taking part in this conference.  It just so happened (by God’s grace!) that the day the conference ended was the night that my friends had planned to meet.  As soon as they found out that I was in town, they were all excited to see me again.   Two of them  drove all the way over to my hotel in Rome and picked me up.  So there I was in front of my old school and 15 of my old class mates were standing there!

I couldn’t believe it!  I was so excited that I was ready to just pull my bible out and start preaching, but then when i realized that  it would be extremely awkward for them…  I decided to wait.   Slowly, as the night kept going, God gave me a chance to speak to each of my friends in a more personal way.  Whether it was in the car with two of them, or later at the restaurant, slowly but surely, by the time they brought me back to my hotel I had shared the gospel clearly with each of them.

That night I didn’t sleep much either!

Why do I share this story with you?

Well its simple.   It is time that some of you wash your hands.  We all have some people in our lives who need to hear the gospel, or else because of what the word of God says, they will be going to hell and pay for their own sin. God doesn’t require you to save them, all he requires is that you warn them.  You need to warn them that their sin causes them to be separated from God, and nothing they can do can bring them to God, except by trusting in Christ.

There are many people out there, so God obviously doesn’t want you to share the gospel with everyone in the whole world.  What He does want, is that you will be faithful with the people that cross your path.  You shouldnt need someone else to share the gospel with your family members, or someone else to share the gospel with people from your work, or someone else to share the gospel with your classmates.  It has to be you!

IF NOT YOU -  WHO?