“Sin, over time, turns you into the proud type who rolls your eyes at the need for forgiveness. What you’ve done becomes the new normal. This is how sin gets us to give up on God. It doesn’t happen all at once; it’s a slow fade. An invisible web that gets thicker and thicker toward the middle.”- Kyle Idleman
In Chapter 7 (“Untangled from Unbelief”) of Don’t Give Up, Kyle Idleman compares the sin that entangles (Hebrews 12:1) to walking through a sticky spider web. Because life has countless paths and all kinds of sticky webs.
For something attractive lurks behind life’s snags and entanglements. As a result, Pastor Idleman observes, that attractions calls out to who we are deep inside. But the issue comes when we abandon the use God intended for those things. Like a spider web, we enmesh ourselves in an unhealthy attitude toward them.
And as we head deeper into the center of the web, we find ourselves farther from freedom. Next, as Kyle explains, apathy takes over:
“The more tangled up in sin you become, the less you seem to notice or care. Sin hardens your heart and makes you indifferent to the damage you may be doing to yourself. It also makes you oblivious to others who have been tangled up in your sin. We feel no sense of urgency about it. We’ll turn to God at some point; we’re just waiting for a convenient time. But the problem is that a side effect of sin is a creeping indifference. More and more, the sin seems like less and less.”
Finally, Kyle notes, you run out of steam. Then you tell yourself being stuck in that web isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you. Furthermore, perhaps you could make your home there. Yet, that, the author cautions, entangles you in the stickiest strand of all: apathy.
Today’s question: What Bible verses prevent you from the slow fade of giving up on God? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Guilt and shame – sin’s side effects”
