Are You Hard Headed?
Are You Hard Headed?
“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
John 15:2
This is just one of many parables told by Jesus during His ministry that have resonated with me over and over during the last three years.
You see, I’ve been hard headed all my life.
This doesn’t mean that I haven’t learned anything prior to turning my life over to Christ. It doesn’t mean that I was a bad person or that I did really horrible things. Although I’m not removed from that list either. It just means that sometimes it took me a little longer to realize the wrong thing over the right thing.
I’ve done plenty of things that I’ve felt remorse, shame, guilt and humility over. And there are things that I’ve had to learn the hard way through. There are things, unfortunately, that I am still struggling with. Our behavior, attitude, thoughts and actions can produce sin in our lives. And no matter how we want to label it or approach it, we are still responsible for it. Sin is different in everyone, although it all looks the same to God. It is what separates us from Him, it’s our disobedience from good and righteous.
Each of our sins look differently, however, as Christian’s our purpose remains the same. Our achievement is to become more Christlike and to grow closer to God by overcoming our sins. It is challenging, to say the least, that we will never be sinless. There will always be sin in our life, that is something we will never avoid. As hard as we try, it is impossible.
So we take each sin as they are and we work to overcome them, extinguish them or confront them. Some sins are easy to push aside or as time moves on, they disappear as our relationship with God grows closer. And then there are those lingering sins which never go away, even as hard as we try. One of the hardest things we can do is to try and control our sin. More on this in a bit.
People just don’t like to talk about their sin. Of course, I’m talking about myself here.
Sin is a nasty three letter word. Take the word ‘sex’ for example. When I was growing up, if someone said the word sex, people were shocked. If we heard the word sex, it resembled a curse-word, we giggled or laughed. Nobody said the word sex out loud. It was reserved for private discussion, by adults, for adults. It made it mysterious and Interesting. It was taboo.
Unfortunately, sex and the word itself have become more common place and it’s use does not provide for shock-value any more. Sin, on the other hand, still holds it value.
Society has classified and categorized sin in many ways. It’s made some sin acceptable, while most is still viewed and judged negatively. There are penalties, punishment and fines for most sins. Society has even made many sins commonplace and acceptable. One thing will always remain the same - sin separates us from God. The Bible clearly defines what sin is.
Some sin can be overcome by a closer relationship with God. The more we read, pray and study the more we grow in our understanding and knowledge. Our wisdom begins to overcome some of these sins. Some of these sins are easily identified by most of us and they aren’t very private. For me a sin that dropped off almost immediately, was my use of profanity. In my previous profession, and with the people I commonly associated with, profanity was my primary language. In fact, most people used it in almost every sentence. It was harder not to use profanity, than it was to use it. However, when I turned my life to Christ, it almost immediately fell away. Of course, horrible habits are hard to kill, and this one rears its head on occasion, but very very infrequently.
“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort,”
II Timothy 2:15-17
And then there are the sins that we occasionally struggle with that just don’t seem to fall away. The ones that we go to God with every once in awhile but more than we would like to admit. They come and they go, sometimes we don’t even take these sins to God. There is some intermittent struggling, but nothing heavy. As soon as we begin to recognize these sins, they quickly disappear, for a short time. In fact, most of the time we won’t even recognize these sins, as sins. These sins sometimes may be the way we treat others, or our attitudes, our behaviors or even how we treat ourselves or what we think about. These sins are more public than private and most of the time we are unaware of them.
And then there are the private, besetting sins that no matter what, we just can’t seem to get away from them. These sins, we are well aware of these sins. These are sins that we take to God, keep them to ourselves and work diligently on trying to overcome them. These are sins that we keep to ourselves and that we want hidden from everyone else, at all costs. For some, these may be a genuine struggle. It may constantly bring grief, fear, anxiety or guilt. These are our hardest sins to overcome.
No matter which type of sin you are confronting, God does not want you to struggle or to be separated from Him.
We constantly struggle to control sin in our life. We work diligently to avoid things that cause sin, to maneuver around it or to get to work, trying to fix it. We can’t. As much as we try to be the one to fix every broken thing in our lives, we can’t do it without Jesus Christ. Sure, we can temporarily overcome some things. We can make decisions for good or bad. We can even go on living a great life, according to our standards. But we will never have a life rich in Christlike attitudes and behavior unless we grow close to Him.
God’s desire is not for us to be laden with sin. His desire is that we will bear good fruit. We can be hard headed in our attempts at overcoming or dealing with sin. As long as we know that we can always turn to God for help. It’s when we continue in our stubbornness and refuse to take our sin before God that we will continue to struggle with our sin. God will continue to prune those branches in our life that produce bad fruit. And sometimes that can be painful.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Galatians 5:22-24
“Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.””
II Timothy 2:19