(Continued from Part One)
….There are still areas of my life that are not as straight as they should be, which are not aligned correctly. I still have to struggle with the sinfully “crooked” things in my life. But since God can make them straight, I keep looking to Him, I keep praying to Him, and I keep my trust in Him to straighten me out.
As a “wretched man” I will continue to look to Him until the day I am “delivered from this body of death” (Romans 7:24). He will make me perfectly straight!
Is there something “crooked” in your life? Is there something in your life that reminds you that, without God’s intervention, this will not come right? Is there something that is a constant reminder that God is God and man is man? Let us hope this is the case, because this will lead to an appreciation of the good news that God, in Christ, is our hope.
Look to Christ. Respond to His invitation to come to Him, the one who is meek and lowly of heart. Jesus Christ is God and is able to straighten your sin-bowed soul. He can straighten out a whole lot of other things as well. And if He chooses not to, well, that is okay for, in the end, it will be for your good and for His glory.
The Bible says, “. . . the crooked shall be made straight, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke.3: 5, 6).
Things in life are “crooked” but we need something that is straight to compare it to – a crooked line compared to a straight line. Crooked people, the crook, the dishonest person, someone not of upright conduct or character, compared to the person that is upright and straight.
As Solomon in his day, we still to this day see the crookedness of man. We see that with their abusive habits and behaviour, they are a danger to themselves and others. We have established institutions to straighten them out, hopefully. If these institutions don’t correct their problems, they are then sent to a correctional institution for being a crook.
There is nothing we can do in our own power to make crooked people straight, if this was the case we would have no need for Jesus and the salvation He offers.
Jesus only can straighten the crooked out.
Let me conclude with this:
The “Crookedness” being referred to, is people’s nature; this is all manner of deceit, hypocrisy, corruption, guile and untruthfulness. People that love power and who are crooked in every sense of the word, are liars, cheaters, thieves, murderers, adulterers, the ungodly; this is the “crook” that God can straighten out.
Jesus makes the crooked straight through His shed blood, He cleanses them and gives them a new heart (Is.1:18; Ez.36:26). When the crook (and we were all crooks at one time) repents of their sins and puts their faith in Jesus and His finished work of redemption at Calvary, that is when they are saved and forgiven of all their sins and crookedness. They become a new creature in Christ (2 Cor.5:17) and begin walking the straight and narrow way, where there’s no room for crookedness.
Once someone is saved, they make straight paths for their feet (Hebrews.12:13) and follow the “highway of the upright (straight)” which is “to depart from evil (crookedness)” (Proverbs 16:17).
Jesus was condemned and bent crooked in the manner He was hung on the cross, and from the pain that gripped His body, we have been made straight – through Him.
Let us pray:
We pray for our communities in South Africa at this time, especially for those communities that have suffered violence this last week. We ask You to embolden Your people in those communities to be beacons of hope, compassion and strength and by their lives be examples of Your Son, Jesus Christ, so drawing others to You, our only hope in this world. We pray for our leaders, nationally and locally, for the Police and the Emergency Services, that in spite of bureaucracy and lack of resources, they would be strong in leadership, just, honest and consistent in all they do to serve their communities.
We thank You for Your patience and grace for all those who feel spiritual crisis in their lives. Most of all, we thank You for being beside us at all times; whether we recognise this or not.
Our loving God, You acted decisively in history by raising Christ from the dead. Breathe new life in all of us who dare to call ourselves Christians that we might add death-defying deeds to our death-defying faith. We pray in the name of the Risen Christ. Amen.
Eric Smith