The Greatest Sin In The World

The Greatest Sin in the World!

The Greatest Sin in the World! If I was to ask you what the greatest sin in the world was I would suspect that I would get dozens of different answers. Murder, adultery, homosexuality, lust, cheating, stealing, hatred. So what it the greatest sin the world. It is a sin that each one of us has no doubt committed at some point or another in our Christian life.

A sin that ensnared Adam and Eve, Abraham, David, Moses, Gideon, Jonah, Peter, Paul, Mark and a host of other characters from both the Old and New Testaments. A sin that I struggle with personally and if you were honest a sin that you might be dealing with in life right now. And you are sitting there thinking: I wonder how he knew?

This sin will limit your Christian walk, it will limit what God can do through you, and it will limit what our church can do. This sin is the reason the vast majority of our communities, our province and our country remain unreached and unchallenged by the gospel.

If I asked that you stand and identify yourself this morning if this is an issue in your life I would suspect that there would be as many of you standing as there would be of you sitting. When we as Christians have defeated this sin then we will finally be able to accomplish all that God has for us as individuals and as a church.

And you are sitting there thinking: Come on Denn spit it out, what it the Greatest Sin in the World?

Well let’s go back to the scripture that was read earlier this morning. James 4:17 Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. And so the greatest sin in the world is failing to be all that God would have us to be.

You need to realize from the beginning that you are special, and never let anyone tell you any different. You are a wonderful creation of God, young, old, tall, short, male, female, smart or not so smart. God made you the way you are and God don’t goof. The same God that created the heavens and the earth, the same God who carved the Grand Canyon with his finger, scooped the oceans with his hands, cast the milk way into the evening sky and doddles with sunsets and rainbows created you. So you always need to remember “God don’t sponsor flops”

Each of you was designed and created for a purpose, you are no accident and you have no right to belittle yourself or to allow anyone else to belittle you. You were put here for a reason and you have no right to be any less then you can be.

It was Adam who started it, Adam who braced his feet and refused to be what his creator intended for him to be. Instead a life of discovery became a life of drudgery, a life of beauty was replaced with ashes, serenity was washed away with sweat, thorns and weeds displaced the flowers.

The greatest waste of energy today has nothing to do with SUVs or leaving your lights on all night or not insulating your home. The greatest energy shortage today is the unused potential of God’s people.

William James is credited with saying that most of us only use 10% of our available potential. Now we all know that 73% of statistics like that are made up, but what if the number was even twice that or even four times that? And it was Dr. W. Ross Adey from The Brain Research Institute of UCLA who wrote “The ultimate creative capacity of the human brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.”.

Simply put, the brain has no limits other than those that are self imposed. Perhaps going back to Leo Tolstoy’s statement in his book “War and Peace” “We lost because we told ourselves we lost.”

I wonder how different the world would be if instead of being satisfied with only using 10% of our potential if we decided to use 20% or 30%? What could God do with us if only we decided to be everything that we could be.

And perhaps you are sitting there thinking “Preacher, I haven’t got anything, I have no talents, no potential and the little bit I could contribute wouldn’t help at all.”

And that my friends is hogwash, pure unadulterated rubbish. Let’s try a little exercise, ok? Take these two fingers and place them right here on you neck, go ahead it won’t hurt. If there is a pulse than there is potential. The problem is that we get caught up in the big things and perfection and if we can’t do it big and perfect then we don’t want to do it.