Illustration: Sin

In the devotional book My Heart: Christ's Home Through the Year, Rick Ezell wrote this: "In his book Fuzzy Memories, Jack Handey writes: 'There used to be this bully who would demand my lunch money every day. Because I was smaller, I would give it to him; but then I decided to fight back. I started taking karate lessons, but then the karate lesson guy said I had to start paying him $5 a lesson. So I just went back to paying the bully.'

"Isn't that most like us? Too many of us feel it is easier to pay the bully than it is to learn how to defeat him. That's the way many of us are with sin. Sin violates the covenant relationship with God. It is disobedience against a gracious and lovingly heavenly Father. The primary reason we want sin removed from our lives is to restore our relationship with our heavenly Father. However, we have neither the strength nor the moral completeness to accomplish such a monumental task. For that we have to rely on Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

"Why don't you stop paying the bully, Satan, and start asking God for forgiveness and the strength to move past your sin?"
(from Rick Ezell's One Minute Uplift weekly email devotional)