Because he preferred to share the oppression [suffer the hardships] and bear the shame of the people of God rather than to have the fleeting enjoyment of a sinful life. – Hebrews 11:25, Amplified Bible (AMP)

I was at the gym, acting like I wanted to lose weight. As part of the ruse, I hopped on to an elliptical machine and began flipping channels on the machine’s built-in television set. A movie starring Matt Damon caught my eye, but it wasn’t Matt’s character that grabbed my attention.

After paying a photographer to take a portrait photo of the two of them, twin boys eagerly went on their way in search of the perfect birthday cake. After finding it, they returned home and placed the cake and the portrait on the kitchen table as a simple, but endearing, birthday present for their mother. The boys went upstairs to their room and waited with anticipation until they heard the front door open. They walked to the top of the staircase to see what would happen, but their hearts sank in response to the scene. Their mother, totally wasted by drugs and alcohol, stumbled to the kitchen without even a glance at the boys’ birthday present. The only thing the mother had on her mind was getting to the refrigerator where, not surprisingly, she had more booze. The boys walked dejectedly back into their room, their mother never noticing them or their present before she passed out.

The next morning, two social workers knocked on the family’s door. The boys refused to answer as the government officials called to them by name. The boys knew the officials had come to take them away from their mother, but they loved her, and they wanted to stay with her. They tried desperately to wake their mother from her stupor, but to no avail. It was at this point that I had to turn the movie off, too moved by the thought that such painful scenes play out in real life every day.

A similar, but different, scene also plays out every day, but this scene has the parent/child roles reversed. God the Father longs for a relationship with His creation, and He gave humanity a tremendous gift in Jesus Christ to make that relationship possible. But, instead of acknowledging the gift, many walk past it, going right to the refrigerator in which they have stored all of their favorite dainties of sin. This pattern of ignoring God and indulging sin is by no means limited to the lost. Many Christians never grasp that true fellowship with Christ requires giving up the sin that Christ abhors. As long as we cling to the sin, Christ will keep His distance from us.

In a sober moment, the mother in the movie would no doubt be crushed, ashamed, and humbled by how much her poor choices hurt her boys. But the odds are that she never had a sober moment, so dedicated she was to her sin. Likewise, when we are more committed to our sin than to our Savior, then we are so awash with sin’s intoxication that we can hardly understand how much pain we are causing our Father.

It’s time to stop hurting our best Friend, thank Him for His gift, and build your relationship with Him.

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