Stopping to Think

Just a quick thought on grace. Reading in Matthew 26 in my devos today and Jesus tells them the will all fall away, and of course as we know, Peter says "not me! I'll die before I leave you!" Of course he's wrong. Peter's confidence is misplaced. Jesus reinterates that Peter will not only fall away, but more than the other disciples, will verbally deny Jesus three times before morning. imagine being Peter right now. You are Jesus' closest earthly friend. And you're told that you will fall away. You reassure him that you are faithful. And then you're told you're falling will be worse than the rest. Isn't that us? Does it not seem that every time we become more determined to be "good  Christians" that these are the moments we fall the hardest? Of course they are. That used to terribly frustrate me. Reading that today though showed me something beautiful. Those failures are the grace of God. If through grit and Will-power(pardon the pun...

So this will probably be another short one.  But I have been wrestling for a while now with the whole concept of sin.  What is sin?  I can go to the Bible and from there determine what actions and inactions are sinful, but is that really what sin is?  How does fit with the Gospel?  Jesus came to die, not from my wrong actions and/or inactions, but from my sin that condemns me to Hell.  But how can we call actions a heart condition?  We seem to teach something that is contradictory, like there is a disconnect between our doctrine of sin in reference to actions and our doctrine of sin in reference to salvation.  And this has bugged me.  If sin is merely to "miss the mark", to do what I ought not, or to not do what I ought, how can I be saved from it?  I still do things I ought not and fail to do that which I ought.  Even the Apostle Paul wrestled with this problem!   But.  What is the mark that we are missing?  It is t...