Not Stupid
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:” John 16:7-8
“I keep doing the same stupid thing over and over,” wrote a woman who was reaching out to me for help. “I want to stop.” Oh, how I could relate! It wasn’t just that I knew what it feels like to keep doing the same seemingly stupid thing over and over and be unable to stop. It was that I could relate to the fact she didn’t realize what she was doing was NOT STUPID. What she was doing was SIN!
The first time I remember asking God to forgive me for something was when I was in my 20s and had gone to a recovery program to get help with my alcoholism. I was told to pray to anything I believed in that was greater than me, whether it be any god or no god at all, that I needed to learn to live my life according to spiritual principles, regardless of what those principles may or may not be, and that the stupid things I couldn’t stop doing were related to defects in my makeup. There was no mention of heaven, hell, Jesus Christ, salvation, sin, or the Bible. I spent years celebrating what became my new-found, long-term sobriety, all the while on a pathway headed straight to hell.
What the woman who reached out to me had been unable to see was that she was living a life of sin apart from God and headed for eternity in hell, while missing out on the amazing relationship with God on earth that we enter into now and forever when we repent of our sins, believe in Christ as Lord, and commit our heart and ways to the Lord. This is exactly what I had failed to see also, and this is exactly why we are living in a lost and dying world with ever-increasing evil and darkness. What the world calls nothing more than “stupid,” a “mistake,” a “defect,” a “shortcoming,” etc. is NOT STUPID; this mentality is DEADLY because if we pride-fully do not recognize who God is, how we are forever separated from Him because of our sins, that we need a Savior, and that Jesus died on the cross and rose again to be that Savior, and that we need to turn from our sins unto Christ and the Bible, we will spend eternity apart from God in unfathomable hell.
God’s Holy Spirit, among His numerous life-transforming jobs, convicts the world of sin, not stupidity, so we come to Christ for our salvation and eternal life with God in heaven. Is He tugging on your heartstrings?