He has sent me … to bestow on them a crown of beauty. … They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. —Isaiah 61:1, 3
Suppose there was a gardener who had planted and cared for a prize-winning bed of flowers. Which would he hate more: a weed in the common field or a weed in the bed of his prize-winning flowers? Obviously, he would hate the weed in his flower bed more because it chokes the life out of his prize-winning flowers and destroys the glory of his handiwork. In the same way God hates sin infinitely more in the lives of Christians because we are His vineyard, “the plantings of the Lord.” The most wonderful thing of all is that He loves us with an everlasting love and reckons us as perfectly righteous because of our faith in Christ and His work on the cross.
{ PRAYER STARTER }
Father, I don’t want the weeds of sin in my life to choke out Your glorious presence and power. Show me those sins, and remove them from my life. I want only what is pure and holy and righteous from You.
Nothing describes God’s abhorrence for sin in
the wicked better than the degree of eternal
punishment He prescribes for it.
