THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS SPIRITUAL CROP FAILURE 

                In 1995 the national media carried a report of one sixteen-year-old who paid off his gambling debts by turning his girlfriend into a prostitute. 1996 brought three separate cases of rape to our attention in Indianapolis with all three offenders being at or below age 12.  In ‘97 two college students conspired and committed murder by the birthing of their child in a motel room and subsequent abandonment of the child to die in a dumpster.  ’98 we were witness to several cases across the country of young men cutting down fellow students and at least one teacher with gunfire, apparently with as little motivation as breaking up with a girlfriend. Should we mention three Carmel teens slain by fellow teenagers, the two young men tried for the death of an elderly preacher and his wife by use of an axe, or the elderly Brownsburg couple (one killed, one wounded critically) attacked in their home by a local teen? How about the Indiana mother who strapped her two children into their car seats and sent the car to the bottom of a lake because her boyfriend didn’t want children or the recent sexual assault of a young man on a school bus by several athletes. You may well ask why the gruesome recounting of just a small portion of the heartache that surrounds us.  Certainly not to point out the wrongs of such.  Believers don’t need to be told not to covet, hate, murder, or lust.  No, the point in the above is ask, “What now?”  Most of the above were committed by young people, some juveniles. How many heartaches and tears will be shed by parents and grandparents?  What voices will speak to them in the silence of a dark sleepless night?  What scars are these people going to have on mind and heart that will NEVER GO AWAY?

                And really, the point is that these people are not that much different from you and me. Some of us have coveted, some lusted. Have you ever let anger control you?  Jesus likens wrathful anger to hatred, and hatred to murder.  Not much difference there.  Galatians 6:7 tells us, “Do not be deceived…whatever a man sows, this will he also reap.”  The aforementioned people played with sinful fire and got burnt. Now they are scarred for the rest of their life. But the truth is that sin always does this.  If unrepented of, it sears the conscience.  You don’t have to murder or rape to hurt yourself with sin.  “Don’t be deceived,” we will each reap what we sow.

                If you play with coveting by gambling, there will be a price to pay in your heart.  If we play with lust, we will reap as we’re sowing.  Solomon said not to even “look at” the wine, it is deceitful and there’s a price to be paid at the last. If you let hatred or malice take a place in your heart, you are the one who will reap the reward of that decision.  Every sin that we allow to put roots down into our heart will cost us dearly because God said we reap what we sow.  Do you believe Him?                                       Mac