working hard to sin

i have grown up hearing the statement that "it is easier to sin then it is to follow God." or something to that extent. i have heard this based on the reason that it is too hard to do right and to follow God. you are never going to please Him anyway, so why even try? it always made sense to me, because while it takes an effort to follow God, you can sit in your lounge chair watching a basketball game and sin. (not that watching a basketball game is, but it could be glutony or sloth, maybe it is your thought life or you had a few to many beers.

but i want to take a look at what sin is. it can be defined as missing the mark. well if you have a target and miss the target you must hit something else other then a target, maybe it is the grass or the tree behind the target. so each time you sin you must affect something or someone else around you. this could be directly or indirectly affecting them in to how they view you.

now when you miss the mark, it can be unintentional, meaning that it was an accident or something that you did not quie realize it was a sin in the first place. this in a way is more acceptable because how can it be your fault when you were ignorant. every now and then someone will slip but it is easier to stand back up when it is unintentional because you are first of all trying to follow God in the beginning. but when you do realize that it was a sin it is still importan to confess this sin.

the send part of sin is where it starts to become hard work. intentional sin is an outright, blatant mentality that you are going to do whatever you want when ever you want to do it. this sin can be hidden or exposed. when you have an exposed sin and you do not care what others think, well that is easy. but trying to keep an intentional sin hidden can prove to be difficult.

most people i think who try to hide their sin know the difference between right and wrong. they are for the majority are the ones who attend church or have at least attended church in the past. these are the people sitting next to you in the pew and singing the same song and listening to the same message. but becuase they are trying to hide this sin from you and everyone else, they look, talk and act like you. trying to cover up something and keeping a lifestyle to match can be hard work, always hiding and pretending that you are someone you arent.

these are the people that are on your worship team having sex with there girlfriend. these are the ones who are gossipping but trying hard to not let everyone find out. this is the guy having an affair with his secretary. or driving dangerously fast on the interstate because you are in a hurry. this is the teenage guy who goes to bed a little later then his parents so he can download some porn from the internet or the recovering alcoholic taking a swig thinking that no one will ever find out. these are the teens at camp that sneak off to study anatomy. these are the ones that know the rules but blatany break them.

unfortunately they are sugar coating everything they are doing because they do not think it will affect anyone outside of them. no one willl ever find out. so what do we do when we are in this situation? or know someone else? what is it that you would do?

women in ministry

check out the stats that the wesleyan church just released on women in ministry.
http://www.wesleyan.org/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=E7B47906A5AD4EC3AE3D3ED6DA544B63&type=gen&mod=Core%20Pages&gid=6AC0E9B553C547D58F66A17866567D65&AudID=299A16BD5B604108B06C70F8A8FDACA5

in this article released it addresses the numbers of women in ministry. the question i have are these statistics good, or at least show progress within the wesleyan church? my first guess is they are not. the other day i received in the mail "the wesleyan church directory" which has addresses for every pastor within the united states. now one can estimate that there are 35 names on each sheet with 125 pages. which we can estimate about 4400 pastors in the u.s.

400 of these are women whether they are ordained, licensed or still studying for the ministry. check out the stats and let me know what you think?

my questions and biblical answers

i grew up with the mentality of "if you have a question you will be able to find the answer in the Bible."
well as i became older it was finally time to look all these answers up in scripture. and for the majority of my questions i did find answers. but there were still other questions that i had that the answers were not scripted out in front of us. or the answers became really vague.

we have the answers of "love the Lord with all your heart and to love your neigbor as yourself." this helps us put things in perspective of who or what is the most important. i also have the answer that "God created the heavens and the earth." but i dont have the answer of exactly how or when that came about. we have the answers of "do not murder," but we do not necessarily have the context of what this means pertaining to capital punishment, suicide, abortion or euthanasia.

we have come to the assumption that if we just follow scripture then we are doing God's will. but how can i follow scripture if there is not necessarily something written on certain idea's? how can i know the best case scenario? in college they told us there are 4 things that we can figure these questions out. the first being scripture. well we know that scripture is and should be the first thing we go to. but after this we can go to what does the tradition of the church say?

the more and more i look at something from the perspective of the body of Christ i see that not all churches agree with all the answers to the questions. (now i want to assure all of you that are reading that what i am discussing right now are the minor's of the church so i do not want to get to bent up on them because they are not essentials for salvation. but rather i am just trying to figure out God's heart on these issues.) or the fact that some churches do not actually have a statment pertaining to some of my questions. so i go on the quest of talking to people asking them what they think is black and white. and then trying to decipher if i am just going to have to live with the idea of there being the chance that there is a lot more gray areas then i desire.

i am one that likes being told how it is and how things should be done. it is a lot easier to figure out an assignment if there are instructions and it is a lot easier to drive the quickest route from point a to point b when you have directions.

unfortuantely life is not all cookie cutters and mapquests. but rather sometimes to get the answer we have to work out the problem on paper. we can try and figure it out but sometimes we have to settle for the unknown.

the bible is still the first place i look for answers and will always be direction i head first but i am realizing more and more the third and fourth places to look for answers are a vital part because we might not be able to find them in scripture or tradition of the church. but rather we must look in reason and experience. experience takes our lives on a journey to show us the answers. reason can take all that we gather over those experiences and shows us how we can learn from them and try to decipher what exactly God's heart is on these issues.

euthanasia and living wills

received some great conversation on capital punishment. now i would like to ask everyones view on euthanasia and living wills. what do you think?