On the reasons for great sin

Dwight Edwards was the pastor of Grace Bible Church in College Station, TX until he failed morally and resigned several years ago. In the great grace of God, repentance was wrought in his heart, as he recently shared in his testimony (search using his last name to find the audio).

What contributed to his failure? Lack of gratitude:

This, for me, has been very important. Cultivating a grateful spirit to the Lord is not important. It’s critical. It is so critical. If I had to pinpoint one thing where I would go back, is that somewhere in the craziness of my thinking I became angrier and angrier at God for what I thought He owed me, I thought He wasn’t giving me, and increasingly I lost gratitude and thankfulness for the immense blessings that were there and I just wasn’t seeing.…We either go through life grateful to God or angry at God…for me it’s a very short step when I stop being grateful to God for what I had to being angry at God for what I [thought] He wasn’t coming through with.…Romans 1 makes a lot more sense to me…“when they knew God they glorified Him not as God nor were thankful,” and then it’s just a slide right down into sin — that’s what happened to me.

As we approach the holiday of Thanksgiving, we do well to be intentional in cultivating gratitude because, 1) it is the fitting response to the recognition of God's work in our lives, and 2) it is difficult to sin when we are genuinely grateful.


(HT: Unashamed Workman)