Day 2058 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Job 8:12-13 NIV

Yesterday we talked about the gap that sin creates between us and God. Sin leads us away from Him by offering all kinds of great sounding promises. But it always leads to the same barren wasteland of misery, regret, and disappointment. The longer we live there, in that place separated from our Father, the more hope we're going to start losing.

As long as we buy those lies that sin tells us, we think we've got it all. We tell ourselves that it's as good as it gets. After all, sin convinces us that we're free to do anything our minds can think of. But no matter what, there's no outrunning the truth. There's no hiding from the fact that sin is slowly destroying us and killing any hope of a better life. And once that hope starts fading, we can easily stop trying and start dying.

As this verse points out, those who forget God and give up on trying to grow closer to Him fade away. They lose that uplifting feeling of hope. They lose the willingness to try to do better because they just figure that they can't. We let a bad choice become a bad habit that leads us to more bad choices. I'm begging you to never allow yourself to get to that point. Never allow your mistakes to become excuses to give up on yourself.

It's not that we can't do better, it's just that we've lived so far apart from God and His ways that we don't remember how to do good. We've forgotten how to make good choices. We've picked the wrong side so many times that it's become our normal. But we can always change. We can always do something different to make ourselves better.

We never have to accept defeat. We never have to accept the death that comes with sin. We never have to accept the "destiny of all who forget God." Sin tells us that we can't do any better and gives us all kinds of reasons and examples of why. But Christ calls us to try again, looking at Him this time and not those mistakes that we've been reminded of. The more we choose to focus on Him the gap between us shrinks, and the gap between us and sin grows. That's when we're headed in the right direction, back to life!