Many a times, we struggle with certain sins in our lives that we just can’t seem to kick for some reason! It may be a tendency to lie, or maybe gossip, it could be boasting, it can be greed or jealousy…..we know it’s not right, we know we have to stop, but we feel helpless in it’s grip! I don’t know about others, but this is definitely my case, I struggle with many sins that I have difficulty letting go of!
The Bible says in
Romans 1: 28-30: Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
We need to understand, we don’t have to have all of these things, even one or two of them will still qualify us as wicked! If we have the tendency to lie, or if we are the jealous sort, if we wish in our hearts for others to fail, if we gossip (who doesn’t!), if we boast about what we have, if we are unkind….any of these things in our lives reflect wickedness!
So despite having received the Lord Jesus into our hearts, being baptized by the Holy Spirit, why is it that we still struggle with these sins? As we see in the verses above, because ‘we did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God’! And so God allowed our minds to become depraved…..lack of knowledge of God ….allows our minds to give in to sin!
Where do we get the knowledge of God from? HIS WORD! If we do not try to learn from the Word of God, if we do not try to keep His Words in our minds, then we will be prone to sin. This is the need that we have for God’s word….probably just one of the many needs….but from the above verses it is clear that unless we keep in our minds the knowledge of God…which is of course from His word…we cannot overcome our weaknesses or temptations to give in to these sins. Everything we need to know about God, about who he is, what he is like, what he wants from us and what he is giving us…is in His word…to know God or to have knowledge of God…we must have knowledge of his Word.
We see this very plainly in
John 1: 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And so knowledge of God is necessary to break free from sins that dominate your life, the very reason for those sins to be in your life is because of the lack of the knowledge of God. And knowledge of God means knowledge of the Word as we see in the verse above….God and his Word are one and the same!
Let us pray and ask the Lord to help us meditate on and retain His word in our minds and our lives, so that we can break free from the bondage of the persistent sins in our lives!
I’m on a dessert spree this week, so I’m going to put up another sweet recipe!
Tender Coconut Pudding
Ingredients:
Tender Coconut Pulp – 500gms
Condensed milk – 1 tin (200ml)
Coconut milk – 2 cups
Gelatin – 2 teaspoons
Hot water - ½ cup
Sugar – 4 tablespoons
Instructions:
1.Heat a saucepan and add sugar. Allow the sugar to melt till golden brown, stir constantly.
2.Turn off the flame and pour this golden brown melted sugar on to a sheet of tin foil and allow it to cool.
3.When cooled it will have the texture of hard candy, place a few sheets of newspaper over this and use a hammer or a pestle to crush this sheet of melted sugar. Store the crushed sugar in an airtight spice bottle or container.
4.Chop the tender coconut pulp into small pieces and set aside.
5.Dissolve the gelatin in the hot water. In a bowl, stir in the coconut milk, condensed milk, gelatin and chopped coconut pulp. Have a taste and add more sugar if you require it to be sweeter. Pour this mixture into a dessert mould or a setting dish (or any dish you prefer to have the dessert set in) and refrigerate overnight.
6.Once set, cut the pudding into individual pieces and sprinkle the crushed melted sugar on each serving right before you serve. If the crushed sugar is sprinkled on the pudding too early, it will melt and blend into the pudding, so will not give the desired result.
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