Romans 6:23.
We have all heard it, "For the wages of sin is death, But the gift of God is eternal life".
But what about when you have excepted God's gift, his grace, his love? Are there still wages? Of course they are, and I am experiencing something now along this topic that I thought I would share.
You see I once thought that I was a wise and smart person, and that it was my duty to share that wisdom with people. Tell them what was right and wrong, tell them when they were right or wrong. Well that was way off, man was it way off. Now I look at things a lot differently. I have come to believe that it is my duty to just share. Share what I have experienced, share what I am good at, bad at, share the love I have been shown, and share the grace I have been given. I still am not really sure why this is what I am supposed to do, but I feel it in my heart it is.
Today I am gonna share something I am going through right now, and hopefully Ill explain it correctly and what I feel in my heart will come out in writing properly
For many years I was an ungodly man. Heck I was an evil man. My heart was so full of hurt and anger. And it lead to a lot of sin. A lot of hurtful actions. And throughout these years, my sins cost me. I paid a lot of penalties. They almost cost me my marriage. Maybe even cost a life or two.
I say for many years cause I realized a little while ago, that if this continues, well death would be my penalty. But here's the kicker, it was not my death I was worried about, but the ones around me, the ones I was supposed to love and care for. I knew that my sin would cause wages others would pay, and these others did not deserve paying that price. My wife, My kids, and the others my life influenced, they deserved better.
So I cried out to God, and experienced the grace and forgiveness that was always talked about. So over the past couple years I have learned to let go a great deal of that hurt and anger, I have learned that I am forgiven, and loved, and that even with all that sin, I am can no longer be that evil person.
But guess what, the wages are still there. No Death is no longer a concern, but the penalties I owe are great. And ironically, the choice I have made to give my life to God, has actually caused the wages to be even greater!!! Yes that right, choosing Christ has cause my wages to get even worse in a sense. How is that you ask, how can they get worse than death? Well they can't really, for of course eternal damnation is the ultimate price of unrepentant sin. But The wages I am going to experience here on earth, those are what will be greater.
But why you ask, why are the penalties worse now that my life is in Gods hands?
Well there are a couple reasons. Let me explain, you see, as a sinful man, Satan had no concern with my life. I was choosing a life he wanted for me, so his job was easy, sit back and let me sin, for I was choosing it on my own. And when I sinned the penalties that where put on me, where just ones that where of the everyday variety. And since I was this hateful person, I really didn't care about the penalties, and who they where put upon. But now since I have put my life in God''s hands. Satan realizes that unless he acts, he will lose me. And in the end us, the ones on this earth are all he has to win, for he knows in the end he will lose himself, so all hes trying to do is take as many with him he can.
So he is acting. and since he has a lot of weaponry in his arsenal with me, due to all my sins, he has a lot to use against me. And he is using it all now. And now that I actually care about the wages, and about the people in my life, the hurt they experience, the wages hurt so much more than they would years ago when I chose not to care.
You see a few years back if my marriage would have ended, I would have dealt with it like I did everything else, blamed someone else, lashed out at others to hurt them so my hurt could be ignored. That kind of thing, and after a while of that I would have convinced myself that It did not really matter. If someone in my life left me, I would find reasons to convince myself I am better off without them, it is their lose, that sort of thing. If I was hurt, I would hurt others. Thus lessening the wages I was experiencing the moment, and ignoring the ultimate wage I would have to pay. But now, all those sins, and all that hurt I caused others in my life, when the consequences of them come up, and when I choose to care, they hurt so much more. Satan knows this, he knows how to hurt me, and he is now using that knowledge to its fullest. And unfortunalty when I fall into his traps, or give into the sin he asks of me, that hurt is much greater for me as well as others around me. And I do fall into them still, for we wall do, that is why we need God's grace/
Well now that I no longer what to deal with the wages as I did in the past, I am stuck with trying to deal with all these consequences in a different way, and because I did it one way for so long, it has been hard to learn new ways, and when I try new ways and they don't work, it leads to even more consequences. And I also at times still revert to the old ways as well, just cause well, old habits are hard to break. Which those actually give Satan even more strength. And he needs my death for a victory, so he will do everything he can that might lead me off the path of eternal life, he is no longer sitting back and just watching.
Now I am not writing this to complain, and to whine about what I am currently experiencing, I am writing this for the same to reasons I have written most of my entries. 1 writing helps me think things through, and when I do that I do much better than when I just act. And 2, I hope that by my sharing, something is learned. By me and whoever else there is there is God has led to read this. Learn from my mistakes, and learn that those mistakes are not the end of me.
So now to wrap up. One might ask, how can it be worth choosing a path that actually has stronger penalties, greater prices to be paid? Well just like everything else in life, the harder your are made to work, the greater the reward will be. And it really helps to know that no matter what is thrown at me, no matter what I have already done, and will do, as long as I keep turning to God, that reward will be waiting for me, but even more importantly, I will have done what God asked of me, and the reward will spill over the to the ones I love, and that is the ultimate reward.
