On
May 17, 2012 I
published an article called Missing The Mark.
I wholeheartedly recommend you review that article then read this one, but for
those of you who cannot review the article let me explain briefly:
What is sin?
Sin is “missing the mark,” (Luke 17:3, 1 Tim. 6:21). To help understand what missing the mark is,
consider the sport of archery. You gain the best points hitting the bulls-eye,
then a little less if your arrow hits in the ring just around the bulls-eye,
and a little less in the next ring around that.
There are a total of ten rings around the bulls-eye. The bulls-eye is the mark to hit. When you
hit any other part of or miss the target altogether you are missing the mark.
What
helps an archer become accurate in hitting the mark? Practice, practice, practice! And just when the archer is hitting the mark
all the time then the target gets moved farther away. The archer has to adjust for the greater
distance and finds he is missing the mark again. Practice, practice, practice! The archer becomes proficient in hitting the
mark and then the target is moved again.
Does the archer give up? No, he
starts again to practice, practice, and practice!
Dealing
with sin is just like the archer having to adjust and practice with a moving
target. Just when we think we have a way
of dealing with temptation we find it eludes us. The target moved. Now, who do we know that is good at moving
targets? Satan likes to use misdirection
to make us sin. Consider what he did
with Eve. She and Adam were told by God
to not eat any fruit from the tree of knowledge or on that day they would die
(Genesis 2:17). Did he outright lie to
Eve? Yes he told her she would not die
and reasoned that it would be OK to eat the forbidden fruit so she would be
“like God”(Genesis 3:4-5). (Was it not
ironic that satan used the same sin he himself was guilty of to tempt man? Isaiah 14:12-14).
With
satan always moving the target how are we ever going to stop missing the mark? It feels like the deck is stacked against us. Praise
God it is not! He provided a way to nail
the target down! Psalm 119:10-12 KJV states,
“With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let
me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I
might not sin against thee. Blessed
art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes.”
A preacher once told me that this verse means that
you should memorize passages of scripture, but taking these three in context it
sure does not sound like it only means memorizing God’s Word. Do you want to be a blessing to God
Himself? Do you want to start hitting your
mark? Grab the Word of God. Do not just memorize it; read it, study it! Think about what you read. Ask God to reveal Himself to you through it. When you do this, it will become alive to
you, really alive! I know because I do
this on a regular basis and it has become alive to me. In fact I was struggling with a temptation
just the other day. Will power is just
not strong enough against temptation.
Believe me I was just barely holding on.
I cried out to God to help me and in my usual Bible reading that
morning I came across a verse in Isaiah that spoke directly to my heart. I wrote that verse down on a note and put it
in my purse. Now, every time that
temptation comes around I grab that note and read it. Temptation flees, and I hit the mark. It is just that easy, so you see, the deck is
not stacked against you if you have the Word of God and use it.
“Therefore
then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne
testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance
(unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings
to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and
active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the
Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its
Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of
obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and
ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews
12:1-2 AMP
