Spam (not the canned meat)

I work for Tim Lee Ministries (my Dad’s ministry) and one thing that I do is monitor and update our web site.  Whenever anyone leaves a comment on our web site, I am notified of it and I have to go in and approve it before it is on the site and made public to everyone.  A while back, my email started going crazy with these notifications!  We were getting all kinds of spam emails, everything from “get Viagra now” to “want free books?” I added a captcha to the web site, you know one of those things where the words are distorted, small, hard to read and might as well be in a different language but somehow you’re suppose to be able to read them in order to leave a comment.  Apparently they prove that you’re a human being and not a robot/alien/hacker/spam email!

The captcha helped a lot and we stopped getting spam almost instantaneously!  I just set down and went through the spam emails and marked them all as spam.  There were over 4,000 of them so it took a while but I can assure you it was the highlight of my day (I need a sarcastic font!)

As I was going through and marking “spam” and watching them instantly disappear into some unseen spam folder, I was reminded of how God does the same thing with our sin.  I only had to mark all of those spam messages one time and they were gone, never to be seen again.  Jesus died for all of our sins once.  If we get to where we cannot forgive ourselves and we cannot get past our past, we might as well tell God that when he sent his one and only Son to die, it was not good enough for us.  The Apostle Paul tells us that we needn’t crucify Christ twice.  He died, was buried and rose again to life and rules in power.  Through Him we have the SAME POWER that raised him from the dead.

 

Once God forgives your sin, it is cast as far as the east is from the west and it is buried into the depths of the sea never to be used against you again (a little harder to find than a spam folder)!  This is only made possible by Christ’s death on the cross and through his great grace!  The act of confession itself is an act of grace on God’s part.  The fact that He made a way for us to come to Him is giving us grace! 

The next time that you’re deleting those pesky spam emails that we all get, remind yourself that your sins, once confessed to God, are gone forever and you are a new creation in Christ Jesus!

Psalm 103:12 “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

1 Peter 3:8 “and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.”

Micah 7:19 “He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all oursins into the depths of the sea.”

1 John 1:9  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

2 Corinthians 5:17 “ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

“Our repentance does not get God’s love.  God’s love enables our repentance.” – Tim Keller

 

This guy freaks me out.