"The Backside of Life"

"We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly." 
(Psalms 106:6)

 Knowing all that God does for us, and living in a manner that shows Him that we are thankful, that is something that requires we acknowledge our direction. We must realize what it is that we came from and what it is that we are capable of doing. It is like that verse in Psalms 23, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." This is where we are and what we were; but God has changed us and we no longer live in the valley of the shadow of death, but we must still walk through it. Sin is something that we were born with, a hereditary problem that is handed done through our fathers. The Bible tells us repeatedly, from beginning to the end, that we have been born in sin. No one needed to teach Cain to kill his brother, the sin that he was born with in his heart, it was what instructed him to do it. God had cautioned him saying, "You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master." (Genesis 4:7 NLT) From the very first child from Adam, sin was present, living within, and waiting to take control. It is something we all have within us, regardless of how we were raised or how good we might live out our days, sin is something that is capable of taking over. For you or I to be capable of doing something that we would think we would not ever do, it only takes us giving into the sin that wants to control us. How could a simple sacrifice lead to committing murder? It was not the sacrifice that caused it, it was Cain's heart and his choice to do wrong. David experienced the same situation, as he choose to do wrong, not confessing his sin, but instead trying to cover it up. The sin took over, causing him to not pay attention to anything else the covering up of his sin; it overtook his normal character, causing him to do something that he otherwise would never have done. We know this by his reaction when Nathan told him about the rich man that took his poor neighbor's pet lamb. David was furious, until Nathan informed him that he was that man. There are few things that we need to really be concerned about our past, because we cannot change anything that has already happened; but forgetting about what it is that we have delivered from is not one of them...

""What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed, and you decorate the monuments of the godly people your ancestors destroyed. Then you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would never have joined them in killing the prophets.' "But in saying that, you testify against yourselves that you are indeed the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started."" (Matthew 23:29-32) NLT