Shock and Awe

“Jesus, you did all of this for me, and I don’t give a damn.”

That is a quote from a testimony I listened to at a youth retreat once and it was the most convicting thing I’ve ever heard. No, she wasn’t saying that directly, she was saying that when you ignore God’s law and commit mortal sin after mortal sin, this is exactly what you are saying: “Jesus, you did all of this for me, and I don’t give a damn.”

Don’t say that. Don’t fall into that trap.

There is so much temptation in today’s secular culture that is fed to us constantly. Today, putting your pronouns in your instagram bio is normalized. Having sex before marriage is normalized. Some doctors encouraging killing an unborn child is normalized. Women loving women and men loving men is normalized. But just a century ago, if any of these things happened, it was abominable and heinous. Where did that mentality come from?

Society even encourages things that aren’t exactly normalized, but are less serious in the eyes of the secular world, such as pornography and masturbation.

When you commit these sins, and many others, you’re not just doing the sin, but you’re becoming the sin.

If we know that these things are wrong, why do we keep doing them? Why do we encourage them? Because Satan is working through people. If you don’t put your pronouns in your bio, you’re criticized. If you don’t have sex before marriage, you’re weak. If you don’t agree that abortion is a woman’s right, you’re anti-women. If you don’t agree with a girl having a girlfriend or a man having a boyfriend, you’re homophobic and a hater. These are the lies that society feeds you day after day.

But here’s the thing: we have to put absolute, radical trust in the Lord. He set those rules for a reason, not to be overbearing and cruel, but to protect our hearts and our souls like the Father He is. True freedom comes from following God. Secularism claims that freedom is going against God’s rules, but that could not be farther from the truth.

If we give into the “I-just-don’t-feel-like-it” complex and keep committing these sins, we’re telling God that we don’t give a damn that He suffered and died on the cross for us. I know that it may be hard to hear. It was hard for me to hear. When I heard it in that testimony, there was a soft ringing in my ears as the speaker paused to make sure her words sunk in.

It’s stuck with me all this time, and has helped me to live out my faith better.

There’s another question that this woman asked, which started out her testimony: If you were to die tonight, if you were to go to bed and not wake up in the morning, would you go to heaven?

These two thoughts that she shared go hand in hand.

We live in a culture where no one is scared of hell anymore. In fact, hell is glamorized. This is why people are so okay with committing these sins over and over again, despite the warnings.

But He was thinking about you as He died on that cross. Jesus was thinking about you, here, thousands of years in the future. He opened the gates of heaven with his death and resurrection to protect you from hell. He did all of this for us, and we have to give a damn. We have to live everyday knowing we might not see the next, striving for heaven.

It’s hard, and we will fall. After all, we are human, but we have to give enough of a damn to come back to Him.

YOUR CHALLENGE TODAY: God loves you. Show him that you love him by repenting.