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You've probably heard of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sounds old fashioned, but actually those same seven are tearing people's lives apart. Which one are you most prone to, and how can you break free from its clutches?
Over this last week and a half on the program, we've been spending some time looking at what are called the "seven deadly sins". Not because we want to do a guilt trip, not because we want to bandy round some seemingly old fashioned word like "sin" but because sin ruins our lives and the seven deadly sins that we've been talking about over these last couple of weeks certainly do that.
Lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, envy and pride; seven of the deadliest. That's the problem with sin, it robs us of life itself. Spend your time being angry all the time, what joy are you going to have? Do the gluttony thing and the weight will ruin your health and quality of life. Lust ruins marriages. On it goes; sin ruins lives, it's plain and it's simple.
I just want to spend some time today with Keith Henry again, our special guest, being honest about the consequences. Tomorrow, we're going to look at the wondrous, beautiful solution but today, let's get real about the consequences. What do you think Keith, do you think that we try and sweep them under the carpet, these sins sometimes?
Keith: I think we can but also think that we don't know what to do about them and secondly we don't feel we have any power to do something about them.
Berni: You see, what strikes me is, let's assume for a moment, God made us, right. Let's assume for a moment God knew what He was doing, didn't make a mistake.
Keith: Yes.
Berni: Right, what all the experts, including yourself, tell us is that each personality type is prone to a particular one of these downfalls. It's almost like each personality type has a good side but there's an underside.
Keith: Yes.
Berni: So the sin of lust is one that the leader is prone to. Gluttony, what personality type, remind me, is prone to gluttony?
Keith: Encourager.
Berni: The encourager. Greed.
Keith: Is the server, it's a fear.
Berni: Yeah. Laziness.
Keith: Is the teacher.
Berni: Anger.
Keith: Is the prophet.
Berni: Envy.
Keith: Is the carer.
Berni: And pride.
Keith: Is the giver.
Berni: See, each one of those is prone to one of those sins. What was God thinking, I wonder sometimes, giving us each one of those sins? See, God doesn't have any sin in Him and yet He creates personality types and we all end up with a particular Achilles heel, if you like.
Keith: We do but I don't think God made us to actually have these things, it's actually in the form of our culture and our nature that is not divine, we have these sins which manifest in our personality, more so in 1 personality than in another and God provides the way out.
Berni: Yeah, we're going to talk about that. I was interested though, one of the passages that's always drawn me to it is in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12 and I want to share this with you. This is the apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 12, beginning in verse 7:
Therefore to keep me from being too elated, (writes Paul) a thorn was given me in my flesh, a messenger of satan to torment me and keep me from being too elated.
Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me but He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness." So I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ. For whenever I am weak then I am strong.
The fist few hundred times I read this passage I thought this thorn in the flesh must be, maybe he's got a limp or maybe there's something wrong with his hip or maybe he's sick or whatever but the more I read it, this thorn in the flesh and the word he uses there, for flesh, is the same word that Paul uses elsewhere for the sinful nature.
Keith: Yes.
Berni: Right. "As a messenger of satan to torment me". The more I read that, the more I'm thinking Paul's actually talking about some sin that he's dealing with and we read elsewhere where Paul writes he struggles to do the right thing, same struggles as you and I have and everybody else has and 3 times Paul goes and says, "God, take it away", and God says, "Well no actually, you know what the answer is, the answer is not me taking this away, the answer is that my grace is sufficient for you and my power becomes perfect in your weakness." Isn't that awesome?
Keith: It is, isn't it?
Berni: And I look at my sins and my weaknesses and the flaws in my character and I think, "You know, God wants to use me anyway even though I have these weaknesses." How do you respond to this passage?
Keith: I agree with you, I think "flesh", the word there is referring to his nature and if we think, from reading about Paul, that he really has a prophet personality, he's very black and white, there's one right way, one wrong way. So his real sin there that God could be talking about is anger, where he resents things not being perfect.
Berni: And you see him getting angry, in the Scriptures, when he's writing to some of these Churches, don't you?
Keith: Yes ... he pulls them up, doesn't he?
Berni: I was going to ask you what personality type you thought Paul was, the prophet. He is a pretty "in your face" kind of guy.
Keith: He is and I know myself, when I've suffered a weakness, a physical weakness or something like that, you do become strong. You become humble, I often say to my wife, "I'm a better person when I'm suffering."
Berni: Yeah.
Keith: 'Cause it's not about me anymore.
Berni: Yeah. Although you don't want to be there all your life.
Keith: No, you don't do you?
Berni: No, you don't say, "God, I want to suffer." (Both laugh)
Keith: No, you want to be free from it but you want to also have the personality that participates in the nature of God, not in our own selfishness or in Paul's case, that resentment, that anger.
Berni: Yeah, I come back to what God said to Paul and I think God's saying it to each one of us. You know, we each have different personality types and we each have an Achilles heel don't we? We each have something, whether it's anger or envy or lust or gluttony or, whatever it is, each one of us, kind of, relates to one of those. We go, "you know something, I really don't want to admit this to anyone but that's me."
Keith: That's right.
Berni: And God's saying to us here, "I know, I made you, you are no surprise to me", and Paul goes and says, "God, you know the best thing would be if you took this away" and God says, "well no, actually the best thing would be Paul, is if you experience my grace instead and if you start to become like Me because the power that I have for you, that power becomes perfect when you're weak." And Paul says, "zippidy-doo-da", and it's almost, we need to accept who we are, good and bad.
Keith: Yes.
Berni: I don't want to revel, I don't want to live in my sin, I don't want to, I want God to deal with that but Gods saying, "I'll deal with it, in my way, in my time. In the mean time, my grace is sufficient for you." What an awesome God.
Keith: He is, He's the one that provides the way out for everything.
Berni: Yeah, and that grace, that grace is hanging there on the cross, that grace is Jesus Christ nailed, His flesh nailed to a cross suffering a painful death to pay for my sin, to pay for your sin, to pay for everybody's sin. That grace is sufficient for Paul, it's sufficient for Keith Henry, it's sufficient for Berni Dymet, it's sufficient for all of us and Gods power is what ultimately changes us.
Keith: I think the whole point of the Bible is that we are to become more like Christ every day. That's our nature; our personality has to change to be more like God. We can't do it but God can do it.
Berni: We cannot and that's what we're going to look at, tomorrow, on the program. Keith, it's been great to talk to you.
Keith: Thank you Berni.
