“To WHOM do I Bow my knee?”

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.  Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.

-1 Chronicles 29:11 (NIV)

There is a battle that is constantly being fought in my heart over why I do what I do.  This battle is for the glory, for the prominence, for the expansion of my influence beyond my current sphere, to see praise and honor ascribed to my life and work, and to be the one whom people turn to in their hour of need because I have wisdom that no one else can offer.  To WHOM do I bow my knee?

            You probably noticed a recurrence of the word ‘my’ in that description and that is the problem.  I know with every fiber of my being that as the Chronicler stated above “the greatness, the power, the glory, the majesty, and the splendor are the Lord’s.”  Everything is God’s, all I have, all I am, all my gifts, talents, and abilities.  Everything God gave me through inspiration and revelation, as well as everything that I have learned through my life experience is HIS.  Nothing I have comes from my own ability to do anything.  Everything we have comes from or through the hands of God and so we can know that God is in control of all. 

            My struggle is not in the knowledge of this truth.  My struggle comes in the motivation behind doing what I do.  Do I write this article to prove how faithful I am to the will of God, secretly seeking glory for myself through a show of humility?  Do I write this article simply to give honor and glory to God, the giver of all things?  Do I write this article because I am moved by the Holy Spirit to share a struggle of mine so that others can know they are not alone in this battle?  Why do I do what I do?  To WHOM do I bow my knee?

            I am confident in saying that my motivations typically begin with a desire to be transparent, to connect with others, to lift up the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to carry a word of the Lord that has been revealed to me by the Holy Spirit, and more.  These are generally the initial driving forces behind why I do what I do, but I have to admit that as I am doing what I have been driven to do by God, my selfish motivations come calling and then I care more about how I can benefit from this call of God.  I ask myself, how can I show my wisdom in this?  How can I be made great through this?  How can I extend my influence beyond my borders through this calling of God?  To WHOM do I bow my knee?

            The struggle here is, I am following the call of God, BUT I am making it about ME.  This is a struggle that is always being fought.  The only way I know to keep myself behind the scenes is to continually come back to the initial reason that I do what I do, which is the Call of God.  It is to the one who called me that I must continually come back and bow at HIS feet.  It is he that must receive all the glory, all the majesty, all the splendor; because if I receive these things, then I will FAIL.  When HE receives all the glory, majesty, and splendor then I no longer live but it is Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2.20).  To WHOM do I bow my knee?         

Mistakes vs Sins?

“God, please forgive me for my…MISTAKES.”

“Jesus died to take away the…MISTAKES…of the world.”

“For the wages of…MISTAKES…is death”

          There’s something very wrong with these statements, isn’t there?  Now to be honest, I have never actually heard these statements said.  However, I regularly hear the word ‘Mistake’ substituted for the word ‘Sin’.  It’s scary how often I have to fight the urge to use this word and just as scary how often I hear this word used by others instead of SIN.  Some people might push back and say, ‘Mistake’ doesn’t sound so mean; ‘Sin’ is such a harsh word; or it’s not really PC to use the word SIN because you’re implying that someone actually did something wrong…well that’s pretty much what ‘Sin’ implies.  Just to be clear, let’s define what sin is and what a mistake is, and then talk about why we should care about the difference.

Mistake – Noun- An error in action, judgment, perception, impression, etc

                 Verb-To understand wrongly; misinterpret

Sin – Noun- 1 A transgression* against moral or religious law or divine authority, especially when deliberate. 2 Any action or condition regarded as morally wrong or deplorable.

*Transgress means to disregard & go beyond the bounds of something; for example, a law

          Mistakes and Sins are both words for incorrect actions, perceptions, judgements, etc.  However, the difference between the two lies in the intent and foreknowledge.  A mistake is like a blunder, a miscalculation, ‘an error in judgment’, or even better, ‘acting in ignorance’.  On the other hand, a sin is a deliberate disregard for what is right.  What makes a sin sinful is that the offender absolutely knew that what they were about to do was wrong and yet they followed through with it anyway.  On the other hand, a mistake is a decision or action based solely on only the incomplete knowledge available at the time.  I know without a doubt that it is illegal and even more importantly dangerous to text and drive at the same time and yet on rare occasion, I still do.  By definition this qualifies as SIN; as opposed to someone who truly did not know that texting and driving was illegal.  They would be making a mistake were they to break this law; they would be acting in ignorance.   

          So why say all this??  Why bring this up and possibly split hairs??  First off I need to say that honestly, I am really only speaking to Christians with what I am about to say.  It is time that we (Christians) eliminate the word MISTAKE from our vocabulary when we talk about our SIN.  As far as our walk with God goes, once we understand (based on the Bible, teachings of others, and revelations of God) that something is against the will of God, we no longer have the right to use the word MISTAKE.  A mistake is an error done in ignorance and once someone is no longer ignorant of the wrong, all other instances of disobeying God in the same way is SIN.   

         Please understand, I’m not saying mistakes get free passes and don’t require forgiveness from God.  Both mistakes and sins need repentance, correction, and forgiveness.  However, based on my study of the Bible, we are accountable for what we know and SIN is what God hates; so, being the one who knowingly does what God hates cannot be a good place to be.  God said “My grace is sufficient for you,” (2 Corinthians 12:9) and that grace saves us from our sins.  So we should seek the instruction and will of God, rest safely in the grace of God and run from the SIN that snares and enslaves us.