Monday
9 Don’t you know that evil people won’t have a share in the blessings of God’s kingdom? Don’t fool yourselves! No one who is immoral or worships idols or is unfaithful in marriage or is a pervert or behaves like a homosexual10 will share in God’s kingdom. Neither will any thief or greedy person or drunkard or anyone who curses and cheats others. 11 Some of you used to be like that. But now the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of God’s Spirit have washed you and made you holy and acceptable to God.
I am a sinner. I have been all those things that Paul mentions ( idolator, adulterous, lustful, thief, greedy, drunkard and cheater). But Jesus has washed and redeemed me. God is changing and making me holy.
The problem is that I cannot forgive myself for the sins I have committed. I hold on to these sins more than I do Jesus. I hold them close. Come to Him and tell Him, have intimacy with him. He raises his arms wide and tells me that my sins are already paid for. I have been washed clean. I am being washed. He will continues to wash me. That’s the beauty of mercy, it was with us in the past, is in the present, and will continue to cover us in the future. We can live clean and unashamed.
Because God gives us mercy, let us try to forgive ourselves and give grace to others throughout the day. Giving someone grace is a small fraction compared to the price our Lord and Savior has paid for us. Let us slowly become like Christ.
Tuesday
12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power
In today’s society, we have become a generation misconstruing God’s purpose of life. For example, Miley Cyrus has one of the hottest songs this year, “We Can’t Stop”. Her lyrics include, “It’s our party and we can do what we want”. We are in the “we can do what we want to” generation and “when I want”.
I am very rebellious. PD tells us to give us a clap offering, I don’t want to do it. My mind says,” Don’t tell me when to clap! I clap when I want to.” How petty is that? Rebellion is from the devil pure and simple. God desires us to obey him.
Let us obey God and cherish His commands, not because we want to get to heaven, or lead a moral life, but because we love Him.
Wednesday
15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts and members of Christ? So should I take part of Christ and join him to a prostitute? Never! 16 And don’t you know that if a man joins himself to a prostitute she becomes a part of him and he becomes a part of her? For God tells us in the Scripture that in his sight the two become one person. 17 But if you give yourself to the Lord, you and Christ are joined together as one person.
There is a lot of freedom to singlehood. The married men always tell me so. There is also loneliness at times. Times when you just want to have another person next to you. Share intimacy with you or a false intimacy. Like the Cheap Trick song, You want someone to want you.
But think about this verse 17. We are joined together with Christ. For the married people, you know how it is to be joined with one person. We are called to be better. We are not called to be like the world. We like the Corinthians take pleasures in the world. Let us strive to be better, because we know our God gives us much more than the pleasures of the world. Let try to find authentic intimacy with Christ.
Thursday
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
I went to dinner with a female friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. A woman is leaving the room and I check her out. My friend she calls me out on it. I had no way of denying it. My went from looking at her eyes to looking at the other woman’s body.
Lust and sexual immorality is one of the toughest things for me. As a man, I feel it is natural to lust after women. But I dehumanize women. I look at them as sexual objects and not how God intended them to be looked at. In Corinthians, Paul is telling us that we have to go against the world. We have to go against our bodies. When we sin sexually, we hurt our own bodies. We hurt our relationships with God and others.We think about ourselves only and we are not thinking of the Lord at that time. We become slaves to sin and separate ourselves from God. We are called to find glory in submission and obedience. Let us try to do that this day!!!
Friday
18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
I should probably be a person in great physical shape because I should be constantly running away from sexual immorality. Sexual immorality is a problem in the modern church. Like I said yesterday, it certainly is a problem for me. Pornography, adultery, sex outside of marriage are problems the church is facing. It’s not just the church in general, but our Karis church has suffered from in the past and probably is suffering from now.
The problem in church of Corinth was that the church was not addressing or stopping sexual immorality. I believe that we need to be able to talk about it and not keep it taboo. We also need to keep ourselves away from dangerous positions. We need to flee sometimes. We need to actually be the CHURCH and not afraid of the judgement that is going to come. Let us pray that we will not live a life of self fulfillment. Let us pray that God will help us to die to ourselves everyday, because that is the only way to gain eternal life.
