100 Days of Discipline Day 3

Scripture:  Matthew 3:8-12, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.  The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  "I baptize you with water for repentance.  But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry.l  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

For those of you who don't know me as well as most, I like to be honest and transparent.  The more transparent I can be about my own life, my struggles, insecurities, and doubts, the more other people will be able to open up about theirs and start to process and work through them.  I like being transparent, transparency is good.  It breaks down barriers and allows people to see in me, "Hey, this is what I'm struggling with, I'm just being honest."  With that said, 10 minutes ago I was really, truly being tempted to fall into sin.  There was just that one thing, one idea that kept be planted in my mind, and like a cancer it spread throughout my entire body.  I could literally feel my heart racing and my stomach turning as I fought with my entire being to withstand the assault my spirit was taking.  Throughout the next few minutes, I kept on repeating a song over and over in my head.  Actually, more specifically, one line of a song.  "We are calling out.  Let's get back to our first love...this is a call for discernment."  And with that anthem playing in my head, I found the temptation easier to withstand, and I'm happy to say that I did not fall into temptation this morning.  Yay me.  Score one for victory!  (The song is below)

After that whole ordeal, I come to read Matthew 3 and read John the Baptist speaking to the Pharisees and Saducees (the chief religious leaders at the time) about being hypocritical and the call to produce good fruit.  If you don't, at the time of Judgment, you'll be separated like chaff from wheat, and the chaff will be burned (hell).  God doesn't joke around.  When He says something, He means it.  So if He commands us to walk in love and think with a pure mind, that's a priority that we have to make.  If we continue to live in sin, how will we look different from the chaff that is thrown away? Part of being a Christian is to not look like the rest of the world.  To stand out.  Be different.  This morning when I struggled with temptation, I could have very well fallen into it and given in, but in the end I would have ended up looking like the rest of the world.  God calls each and every one of us to be different and to walk a different path, but how can we when we live almost the exact same lives and live in the same sins?  How can a tree produce good fruit is the roots are rotten?  In the same way, how can we produce good fruit (which He commands us to do) if our own lives are just as dark? 

"This is a call for discernment," in your own lives.  Seek out, root out, destroy everything that stands in the way of God working in You.  Reminds me of another song by For Today, "Break everything in Your path.  Take Your rightful place in our lives."  It's time to take sin off of the throne that we've placed it on and put Him on it. 

--DyingAnOriginal