By Rob Parlante
Gal 6:1

It seems today in our society the media is fixated on people’s failures in life.  Failures are headline news and revenue sources.  Our culture is obsessed in seeing how far someone has fallen from success and loves to gossip about it.  Often I get asked the question in my business, did you hear what happened to so and so.  Or isn’t that terrible what he did, he must have some serious issues.  Many in our culture today gloat in other peoples misfortunes.  The latest going around is how a young couple with a home improvement TV show, both had extra martial affairs and will be divorcing.  This is headline news.  No one mentions the emotional scars caused by the divorce to the couple and how this will affect their two young children later in life.  The only thing everyone wants to know is if the show will be canceled. Failures and misfortunes shouldn’t surprise us because we live in a fallen world under a curse of sin and death.  The curse is that man has a spiritually dead heart which is searching for love, acceptance, value and worth in things to meet his heart’s need.  Things such as a career, spouse, one’s children, materialism etc.  You name it, man in one fashion or another, thinks it will satisfy his heart’s need.  Man will almost do anything to have a satisfied heart and be at peace, many times resulting in hideous sins.  The only solution to the curse is to allow Christ to regenerate a man’s heart, make it new and allowing Christ to meet all ones needs.  The searching ends with Christ.  We can thank the sin of Adam for putting us in this condition.  We are all under the curse by simply being born into this world physically.  There is only one way out of the curse of sin and death.   That is to be under the law of the Spirit of life.  Let’s read Roman’s 8:2.

Romans 8:2 (AMP) ² For the law of the Spirit of life [which is] in Christ Jesus [the law of our new being] has freed me from the law of sin and of death.

When a person exercises saving faith in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection for the forgiveness of their sins, they are forgiven and have the Spirit of life in them.  They have a new heart.  They have been set free from the curse.  They are a new being, who is in Christ, and set free from the power of sin.  They can now say no to sin.  Sin no longer has the power to control a believer.

After being saved for 27 years, I have noticed a pattern in many believers’ lives.  Once they receive Christ and are set free from the curse, there is an initial joy and awesome time of spiritual revival.  I call this the honeymoon period.  But then something changes.  The initial joy starts to wane and old feelings and destructive patterns start to creep back in.  So they embark on the humanistic approach of trying harder to recapture the initial joy.  They conclude I would be joyous if I just didn’t sin or do this or that.  With this approach relief is temporary at best and life ends up back to what it was prior to their receiving Christ.  Trying harder to overcome sin by self effort will always fail.  The issue isn’t trying harder, but by faith allowing Christ to meet your heart’s needs.  Many young Christians abandon the faith because they don’t think being a Christian works at this point in their walk.  The evil one’s hideous plan is to overtake every believer in a misconduct or sin by making him believe Christ will never meet ones heart need, but their particular sin or misconduct will meet that need instead.  I have found in many cases that sin is a result of man trying to get his heart’s need met in things, which only Christ can meet.  The deception is to look everywhere else but to Christ for your heart’s needs and that they falsely view Christ as just another failing self improvement program.  The evil ones main goal is to discourage a believer from pursing Christ by the error to conclude that this Christian thing just doesn’t work. Let’s Read Gal 6:1.

Galatians 6:1 (AMP) ¹ BRETHREN, IF any person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set him right and restore and reinstate him, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on yourself, lest you should be tempted also.

As a minister of restoration, how do we help younger believers when they fall into this type of thinking?  The answer is to always remind them that only
Christ can meet the needs of their heart and by faith they need to allow Him to works in their lives and rest in His promises.  Christ will always come through if we allow Him to work and mold us.

If you would like to learn more about the truths described here, come join us at Grace Christian Church, currently meeting at the Freehold VFW, every Sunday at 9:30 am.

In Him, Rob Parlante – Elder / Grace Christian Church