Becoming Too Comfortable

I never want to become so comfortable in my sinning that I no longer feel any guilt at all when I do wrong.  This is one of the worst punishments God can send in this life.  For if my conscience feels no guilt, I will be prevented from ever repenting and turning to God.

- Adapted Excerpt from Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds by Starr Meade

BUT ISN'T GOD ALSO MERCIFUL?

• God is certainly merciful,
• but also just.

God's justice demands

• that sin, committed against His supreme majesty
• be punished with the supreme penalty - 
• eternal punishment of body and soul.

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, 

• He abandoned them to their foolish thinking 
• and let them do things that should never be done.  

Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, 

• sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, 
• quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.  

They are backstabbers, 

• haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful.  
• They invent new ways of sinning, 
• and they disobey their parents.  

They refuse to understand, 

• break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.  
• They know God's justice requires 
• that those who do these things deserve to die, 
• yet they do them anyway.  

Worse yet, 

• they encourage others to do them too.  Romans 1:28-32

Then everyone - 

• the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the wealthy, the powerful, 
• and every slave and free person - 
• all hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.  

And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, 

• "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne 
• and from the wrath of the Lamb.  
• For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to survive?  
• Revelation 6:15-17