What comes to mind when you hear the word “holiness”?
Rules?
Restrictions?
A joyless Christian life filled with don’t do this and don’t do that?
Sadly, that’s how many people see it.
But what if holiness is almost the opposite?
What if growing in holiness is really about becoming more like Christ—gaining wisdom, making better decisions, experiencing greater peace, avoiding needless consequences, and increasingly living the kind of life God designed us to live?
If that’s true, why wouldn’t we want more of it?
But there’s another side to today’s discussion.
How does a person move in the opposite direction?
How does someone become a habitual liar—even lying when the truth would make more sense?
How does anger become a way of life?
How does someone become so trapped in sexual sin, addiction, bitterness, or another pattern that he can barely see what it is doing to him and everyone around him?
Scripture gives us a sobering principle:
Sin leads somewhere.
So does obedience.
And the direction we repeatedly choose can affect not only what we do—but eventually how clearly we are able to see.
“I know it’s wrong, but I’ll just ask God to forgive me afterward.”
Have you ever entertained that thought?
Perhaps we don’t say it quite that bluntly. Instead, we tell ourselves:
God understands.
Everyone sins.
I’ll deal with it later.
After all, God promises to forgive us.
And every one of those thoughts can contain enough truth to make a dangerous lie sound reasonable.
God is patient. He is merciful. And He does forgive His children when we genuinely repent.
But does that mean we can deliberately choose to disobey Him while planning to repent afterward?
Scripture calls sin deceitful, and one of its greatest deceptions may be convincing us that we can choose the sin while somehow controlling what happens next.
We can’t.
But there’s an even more sobering problem with the attitude, “I’ll sin now and ask forgiveness later.”
It may reveal something far more serious than a moment of disobedience.
What could it reveal about our relationship with God?
We’ll talk about that today, along with chocolate-covered dirt, foolish talk, and why something we dismiss as “just a joke” may not be funny to God.
Can something become sinful for you even if the Bible does not specifically forbid it?
Romans 14 says it can.
Christians sometimes reach different conclusions about alcohol, entertainment, food, music, holidays, and other so-called gray areas. Scripture may give believers freedom in those matters, but freedom is not the only issue.
What happens when you believe something is wrong but do it anyway?
Even if the action itself is not sinful, your willingness to violate what you believe God requires reveals a heart willing to disobey Him. That guilty conscience can produce spiritual unrest—and may even contribute to fear and anxiety that seem to have no obvious cause.
Today we’ll consider how to settle questions of conscience, why genuine freedom is found in surrender rather than self-indulgence, and why love may sometimes lead us to give up a legitimate freedom for someone else’s good.
We’ll also look at what Job believed about living faithfully during suffering, the one question that will matter when we stand before God, and why our worship songs and familiar prayers must remain grounded in biblical truth.
What do your children actually know about your story?
Not just the family-friendly version.
Not just the lectures about gratitude, respect, or how much harder things were when you were growing up.
Do they know how God rescued you?
Do they know the mistakes you made, the consequences you faced, and the ways God’s grace met you in the middle of your failures?
Many Christian parents spend years warning their children about what not to do, yet never share the testimony that explains why.
Interestingly, Scripture does the exact opposite. The Bible doesn’t hide the failures of Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, or countless others. It tells the whole story—the victories, the sins, the consequences, and ultimately the grace of God.
So should we do the same with our children?
And if so, how much should we share?
Today’s readings offer some surprising insights about the power of testimony, the importance of telling the next generation what God has done, and two dangers every parent should avoid when sharing their story.
Have you ever wondered why we don’t see the kinds of powerful moves of God that we read about in the book of Acts?
Was God simply working differently then? Or could there be another reason?
In today’s reading, we encounter one of the most shocking events in the New Testament. A husband and wife tell what many people would call a “little white lie,” and both lose their lives. At first glance, God’s response can seem severe. But what if this account reveals something important about holiness, hypocrisy, and the fear of God?
Could it be that one of the reasons there is so little spiritual power in many churches today is not that God has changed—but that we have?
Let’s take a closer look at Acts 5 and what it teaches us about truth, obedience, and the kind of faith God blesses.
Maybe it’s something from your past—before you came to Christ. Or maybe it’s something more recent… something you said, did, or thought as a believer that you knew was wrong.
And now you wonder…
“Have I messed up too badly this time?”
If we’re honest, it can sometimes feel easier to believe God forgives our “before Christ” sins than the ones we commit after we know better.
But Scripture paints a different picture.
In Luke 22, as Jesus’ crucifixion draws near, His disciples—those closest to Him—still didn’t get it. While Jesus was preparing Himself for the reality of the cross, they were squabbling about their future positions in the kingdom, bragging about how they would never let Him down, and falling asleep when He asked them to pray.
It’s not exactly their finest hour.
I wonder how many times they looked back on those moments and believed they had failed God.
How about you?
Do you ever feel like you have failed Him? Maybe you promised yourself you’d never fall into that old pattern again… and then you did. Maybe impatience took over, words were spoken you wish you could take back, or discouragement led you to pull away instead of pressing in.
If so, you’re not alone.
And that leads to an important question:
What does God do with people who know they’ve failed Him?
Have you ever found your thoughts drifting toward something you know isn’t right?
Maybe it seems small. Manageable. Easy to control.
But sin is never as harmless as it appears.
We often convince ourselves we can handle it—that we can entertain it without consequence. But sin has a way of quietly taking hold, pulling us further than we ever intended to go.
And it never affects just us.
What begins in the heart eventually spills over, impacting the people closest to us—often in ways we don’t immediately see.
In today’s passage, we’ll see what happens when sin is tolerated rather than confronted—through the effects of polygamy and a failure of both parental and spiritual leadership.
But that’s not the whole story.
In the middle of it all, we’ll also see the steady faithfulness of one godly woman—and the even greater faithfulness of God.
As we come to the end of the book of Judges, we see a sobering pattern: one sin leading to another, until the results become increasingly dark, destructive, and heartbreaking. The stories are unsettling—so much so that they can almost feel shocking to read.
And yet… they don’t feel as distant as we might expect.
In many ways, the kinds of things we see in Judges echo what we see around us today—brokenness, violence, confusion about right and wrong, and a growing resistance to God’s design.
Scripture shows us where that path leads.
And it also reminds us that God is patient—but not indifferent. There comes a point when He says, “Enough.”
So the question for us isn’t just what’s happening in the world…
Our perception, the filter through which we “see” everything, has a tremendous effect on our lives. I often tell people in counseling that we are affected much more by what we think about what happens to us than what actually happens to us. So how do you view the events of your life? What is your filter? Are you looking through the lens of Scripture or through the world’s lens? Are you seeing through the sovereignty of God or through a self-focused lens?
In today’s Old Testament reading, we see God’s swift punishment for idolatry. Though God is patient and merciful with us, it doesn’t mean He’s changed His mind about sin. Sin and idolatry still have painful consequences. But the problem is that idolatry has a blinding effect. And we can become blind to our blindness.
We end up blinded about how we grieve the Holy Spirit when we sin against God, blinded about the extent of our sin and how it hurts others, blinded to the source of our sinful choices, and finally, blinded to how easy it is to justify our sin.
So, how can we tell if something in our lives, even something good, has become an idol?
