I'm a SINNER?

What does it mean to sin? The word sin in Hebrew is chattath, and in Greek it is hamartia. Both these words mean 'to miss the mark.' They are words which illustrate that something is off target. Consider the illustration of aiming and missing the target like in archery. Now consider setting and missing your goal. I’d like you to consider that these two things to be the same. This would be to sin. What am I getting at? Well what if you were to tell someone that you were going to attend their party, and then for whatever reason you end up missing the party? Stay with me here, now. This would by definition be sin. Not because you lied. It’s not even a question of doing something bad or wrong. It’s simply you said one thing and did another. What about being late to a meeting? What about saying you’ll lose twenty pounds and not doing that? What about setting the alarm for 6:00am and hitting the snooze button? Any example will do. What have you come up with? Any time you say “X” and do “Y” this would be missing the mark, wouldn’t it? Would this be sin? It would.

I’m sure you can think of people in your life, right now, when they say they’ll do something you can almost bank on them not doing it. My question to you is really, what kind of person are you? Are you the kind of person who does what you say? Or are you the kind of person that may or may not do what you say? Take a moment and be honest with yourself. I’m sure you have great reasons why you don’t follow through, but regardless of your reasons just simply answer the question. I have no judgment about you if you’re not a person who follows through. This is simply an opportunity to be honest with yourself.

Now, when you find yourself not following through on what you say, what is it that you tell yourself to justify that behavior? How do you let yourself off the hook? Do you tell yourself everyone else is doing it therefore it’s ok? Do you tell yourself that the circumstances were beyond your control, therefore the circumstances allowed you or did not allow you to follow through? What do you say that makes it ok to not be your word?

Consider the possibility that you tell yourself these stories often. In fact it’s these stories that you keep telling yourself that are keeping you from achieving your dreams and goals. How’s that you ask? Think back to the last big goal you set and did not achieve. Heck, think back to any little thing you said you’d do that you did not follow through on. I’d bet money that you told yourself something that made it okay not to follow through on that, didn’t you? Please understand, again, that I have no judgment about this. I’m human. I do the same types of things. What I am getting at, however, is that to the degree that you do what you say you’re going to do, regardless of the circumstances, is to the degree that your life will work. And to the degree that you do not do what you say you’re going to do is to the degree that your life will not work. Let’s think about this, we all have circumstances, don’t we? How is it that some people come through more often than not and some people don’t come through faced with the most ridiculously smallest of circumstances. The truth is that when we’re about making excuses rather than getting the results, well, almost any excuse will do, won’t it? The dog ate my homework. The traffic. The kids. The wife. Stories piled on top of stories. I’d like you to think about this…let’s say at the end of your life you will either have all of the stories, reasons, justifications, rationalizations and excuses or you will have the life of your dreams, which would you rather have? Which is the legacy you’d like to leave for your loved ones? Which is the kind of person you’d like to be remembered as? If you were to be honest with yourself right now, based on how you’re living your life minus the stories, excuses, justifications and rationalizations how would you be remembered if you were to die right now?

Perhaps you’re saying to yourself, “Nobody's perfect.” I certainly understand that, and what if that was a story, excuse or rationalization. It’s really about this idea of being your word or not being your word, and what is the thinking beneath the surface that allows the behavior to come out the way it comes out? Is it that circumstances determine our behaviors or could it be something other than that? There are circumstances beyond our control, for sure, but are there circumstances within our control that we give in to and then rationalize, justify, excuse? Here's a challenge for you, do everything you say you're going to do for this week, as if there are no small promises. Everything is important, because what you say is important, because you're important. Until next time...


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