Rotten to the Core

Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord GOD of hosts. Jeremiah 2:19

D.L. MOODY
I do not exaggerate when I say that I have seen hundreds of backsliders come back, and I have asked them if they had not found it an evil and a bitter thing to leave the Lord. You cannot find a real backslider who has known the Lord, but will admit that it is an evil and a bitter thing to turn away from Him; and I do not know of any one verse more used to bring back wanderers than this very one.
Look at Lot. Did not he find it an evil and a bitter thing? He was twenty years in Sodom and never made a convert. Men would have told you that he was one of the most influential and worthy men in all Sodom. But alas! alas! he ruined his family. And it is a pitiful sight to see that old backslider going through the streets of Sodom at midnight, after he has warned his children, and they have turned a deaf ear to him.

ERWIN LUTZER
Our propensity to turn from the Lord reveals the human heart for what it is. We deny our sin, and when we are found out, we minimize it. Left to ourselves, without the intervention of God’s grace, without the intrusion of His light, we are lovers of darkness. The reason we love the darkness is that the darkness is more consistent with our desires. We do what we want to do, and darkness enables us to do that. How much will it cost you to come to the light and repent?

PRAYER
Father, help me to walk in your Word and not forsake you.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Are there any unrepentant sins in your life that are compromising your testimony as a believer?

Rather than minimizing sin, how should we respond to our sin as a believer?