Here recently I've asked myself, "God has given you so many opportunities and so many blessings and answered your prayers, what part of your life is sinful?"
I don't feel there are shades of gray in God's instruction for us down here on Earth. It's written in black and white.
In a nutshell, I love music and movies. But the way I have been getting it is obviously not what God would view as Christian. I downloaded tons of music and full movies from torrent sites illegally. I also justified it by saying things like "those artists won't use the money they'd make for anything good" or "they make way more than me, they don't need the money". In the Bible, it's stated in plain English, "Thou shalt not steal."
Thinking about this simple line, it became obvious to me that there aren't any "if this, then it's ok" inherent in this commandment. My sacrifice was my music and movies. I vowed to stop downloading a few months back and I haven't done so illegally since. I have also since deleted all of my music and movies that I obtained illegally, bringing my music list from roughly 500 songs to about 20. It was really hard to do so, but I couldn't call myself a true Christian if I simply looked the other way when I was sinning.
The last Baptist church I attended was full of hypocritical people. They would pray and participate in church service on Sunday and be true children of God but were completely different outside of church. It just disgusted me that I was doing some of the same stuff. I couldn't believe that all those years of being sickened by those people I was becoming the very thing I despised, so I changed. I made a sacrifice for the good of my soul and for the good Lord above.
What sacrifices have you all made for God to become better Christians?
I don't feel there are shades of gray in God's instruction for us down here on Earth. It's written in black and white.
In a nutshell, I love music and movies. But the way I have been getting it is obviously not what God would view as Christian. I downloaded tons of music and full movies from torrent sites illegally. I also justified it by saying things like "those artists won't use the money they'd make for anything good" or "they make way more than me, they don't need the money". In the Bible, it's stated in plain English, "Thou shalt not steal."
Thinking about this simple line, it became obvious to me that there aren't any "if this, then it's ok" inherent in this commandment. My sacrifice was my music and movies. I vowed to stop downloading a few months back and I haven't done so illegally since. I have also since deleted all of my music and movies that I obtained illegally, bringing my music list from roughly 500 songs to about 20. It was really hard to do so, but I couldn't call myself a true Christian if I simply looked the other way when I was sinning.
The last Baptist church I attended was full of hypocritical people. They would pray and participate in church service on Sunday and be true children of God but were completely different outside of church. It just disgusted me that I was doing some of the same stuff. I couldn't believe that all those years of being sickened by those people I was becoming the very thing I despised, so I changed. I made a sacrifice for the good of my soul and for the good Lord above.
What sacrifices have you all made for God to become better Christians?
