Nov 5

1 Timothy 4:1-5
1 Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons.
2 These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead.
3 They will say it is wrong to be married and wrong to eat certain foods. But God created those foods to be eaten with thanks by faithful people who know the truth.
4 Since everything God created is good, we should not reject any of it but receive it with thanks.
5 For we know it is made acceptable by the word of God and prayer.

A few years ago in a suburban home in Cincinnati, Ohio, five boys played a game. Each took a turn with a handgun one of the boys had taken from a locked gun cabinet. Each spun the cylinder, placed the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. They thought the gun was unloaded. They thought they were playing a harmless game. What the boys didn't realize was that the gun wasn't empty. Within minutes, a fourteen-year-old boy lay fatally wounded as his friends frantically called 911 in an effort to save his life. Their efforts failed. While most of us would never consider participating in a game of Russian roulette, there are some who play a form of spiritual roulette. Each time they make a bad decision, it's another spin of the cylinder. Each time they choose wrong over right, it's another pull of the trigger. Too often we rationalize our behavior by telling ourselves, "If I do this just once, it won't hurt me." The second time we say, "Well, it didn't hurt the first time, so it must be OK to do it again." And so the sin repeats itself-over and over and over-until the sin we thought was harmless turns destructive, and our consciences die. It is possible for a person's conscience to die. When you continually dismiss those stabs of regret, when you push aside the feeling that you're making the wrong choices, when you disobey God over and over again, your conscience begins to harden until finally it just shrivels up and dies. God has given you a precious warning system-like a smoke alarm or an air raid siren-that's designed to protect you and help you make right choices. It's your conscience. Take good care of it.

REFLECT: What is "spiritual roulette"? Have you ever played it with your conscience? What were the consequences? Perhaps there is a sin in your life that you keep committing over and over that has desensitized you or made you feel distant from God. How can you take care of your conscience and keep it sharp and useful?

PRAY: "God, help me not to play 'spiritual roulette' with my conscience. Keep me alert to the voice of my conscience. Make me sensitive to sin. And help me repent when I disobey you."

My physics teacher has jury duty for the whole week, I don't even know..
Guess there's nothing to do in period 3, just to finish all my homework in my other courses.

For me, I always struggle with losing my temper and using unchristian words, without realizing it, during school hours.
I could never go a consistent week without swearing or losing my cool.
And that's what separates me from God the most.
I don't know exactly what it means to play "Spiritual Roulette" or playing with your conscience..
Isn't our conscience filled with three voices, one with the logical thoughts, following God's word, and another turning us away from Him?
With the last one, being our own, controls our standpoint and basically our decisions?...

I think this might actually be a really strong topic that could grow in the whole Praise Team situation. As a team, we have all the more of the responsibility of taking care of each other.

This is one of those things that we have to take care for whenever we see that one of the people in our congregation is starting to fall apart from Jesus. This is a really short devotion of mine, but I think that it still holds some kind of depth to it when I say that we should always be checking up on each others' Holy Spirit.

thank the lord my computer is working properly!
okay so for todays deovtion there is definitely a lot of examples that can be related to this topic but what i first thought of was your family. i cant count how many times i have let down my family for the same mistakes over and over again. the ones that are doing it dont feel much of the pain because we are inflicting pain on our family, not ourselves. how many times have you committed a "harmless" sin? the more you commit "harmless" sins, the more it becomes risky and hurtful to others and to God.
sorry for short devo...im not feeling well and i kept losing my train of thought.
hope you all have a great week!

What i think spiritual roulette is when we play games knowing that it may or may not effect our relationship and spiritual walk with God. Sometimes, knowing the consequences... we all do things that lead us to sin and upset God... but we still do it... why? i think that we are meant to sin because without sin, we cant be saved by God. That is why there is the existence of sin in our lives.
Minor sins still upset God and if you are able to stop them wihtout struggles, i suggest you do them... but if it is a sin that is overpowering your conscious to stop, God is always there to help you. Pray and ask for forgiveness, God will be there always no matter what... He will help you get through any struggles and/or sins you may have and be with you through the good and bad times.

Interesting story.....
Well, This reminds me of peoples tendency of bad habits.
When we feel like something is wrong, we try our best to avoid getting ourselves in that situation. But once we have sinned that one time, we don't think theres any harm to it. Habits are hard to break once your stuck in it. Our conscience does tell us that we shouldn't do something when we feel it just not right. That same voice is also coming from god. He wants you to avoid any dangers you come across and not get into any problems in your life of faith. The world is filled with many obstacles, god is there to help you overcome these.

K, good night!
~Audrey~

I didn't get much from today's devo..

I guess it's trying to stress the importance of always making good decisions. How we train our conscience is by using it, not ignoring it. Like the 2 voices Yeni talked about last Saturday, we should always be listening to the one that will eventually help us rather than make us do something dumb. Our consciences really are a powerful thing, but at the same time, it's not gonna insist on staying around. If you ignore it, it'll go away, so always pay attention to it and 'feed' it with good choices.

What i understood was sin starts off small
At first it's nothing, then it's only a small issue, then it gradually increases to something huge
At one point, we'll get in too deep from a sin and it'll be hard to get out of that hole.
We shouldn't even be having that chance
We should accept what God made because it is good.
IF we do that, hypothetically, we should be without sin
But of course we ignore our God.
Don't get too deep, it'll be hard to get out.

Spiritual roulette, i consider this when we take God lightly. Just like how the kids didnt know that the gun is loaded, we dont know that God has the power to strike us down. We may think that a small little sin may be harmless but we dont know, only God does.

This reminded me of the Yeni told us last week, about how we have a good conscience and a bad conscience. Always giving us the good points and the bad points telling us to do it and not do it. We should ALWAYS know what the good conscience is and we should try our bestest to do it.

Okay why is the forum an awkward blend of the last and should-be current forum layout...

Anyway, we're always told and talk about keeping each other accountable but to be able to do that, you have to keep yourself accountable first.
Don't just pass off your sins because you didn't notice any consequences.
Do the best you can do and be the best you can be!
Then, you can focus on helping others!