What Girls Wish You Knew

And what I wish had been given to me as a laminated handout in high school. *Edit* As I entered into my freshman year. NOTE: Submit the following knowledge to the glory of Christ Jesus. Click here to edify yourself and enjoy.

Did The Devil Make Me Write This Post?

"The devil made me do it."

This is the spiritual equivalent of pleading not guilty. It is a line of reasoning that I've been encountering to a fair extent this week. Out of the mouths of babes, no less. These five weekdays are Vacation Bible School at my home church. It is my privilege this year to be a group leader. The last time I served three years ago, I was the junior leader.

For some parents, VBS is just five days of babysitting with a biblical backbone. With over 100 children in attendence, most of whom are under the age of 10, it has been very interesting to scratch and sniff their souls. We ask questions such as:

What is God like? What is man like? If God is loving, shouldn't we obey Him? Do you obey Him? What do you know about Jesus? Why was Jesus born? Why did Jesus die? Why did Jesus have to die? Why is Jesus called our Savior? Why did Jesus rise from the dead? What does this mean? What does this mean for you?

Etcetera.

Then we wait for the answers.

The most interesting answers are usually the ones that deal with the question, "What makes men evil? What, or who, makes a man sin?"

"THE DEVIL, SATAN!!!"

Ease up, General Custer, not so fast. Is that really true? Well, yes and no.

The devil did make a man sin . . . once. In the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted and succeeded at making Adam and Eve sin against God (Genesis 3). But he never had to do it again. For one brief moment in the first days of human history, the devil was our assailant. After that, he became our accomplice. In that one disobedient, disloyal act of eating the fruit forbidden, sin became grafted into the physical and spiritual DNA of humanity. The whole of creation groans under the domination of sin and is scarred by it (Romans 8:19-22). Natural man, however, is saturated from within by sin. The Apostle Paul summed the indictment from the Scriptures against man's sinfulness: There is no one righteous, not even one. All have sinned.

As it is written:

"There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one." "Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit"; "The poison of asps is under their lips"; "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

Romans 3:10-18

The devil didn't factor into any of the above charges. We can never claim that we were under duress when we had thought impurely, acted unjustly, spoke unkindly, or hoped wickedly against the well-being of another person. Who makes a man sin? It is himself. You see, in the first murder in the Bible the devil played no part. There wasn't any serpent who spoke in Cain's ear before he wickedly slaughtered his brother Abel. Satan didn't encourage the bloodshed. He didn't tempt Cain. Instead, God spoke to the dejected young man Himself before the crime was committed (Genesis 4:6). To paraphrase, God tells Cain, "I know what you are thinking about. Don't act upon the evil impulses of your heart." No one persuaded or fooled Cain into sinning. God counciled him against sinning. And Cain did it anyway.

The Perfect Place for Me is . . . Picadilly?

You Belong in London

You belong in London, but you belong in many cities... Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sidney. You fit in almost anywhere. And London is diverse and international enough to satisfy many of your tastes. From curry to Shakespeare, London (almost) has it all!

What European City Do You Belong In?