Paul addresses the Church

Last night I attended a small group that covered this passage

1 Corinthians 5

1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? 3Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature[a] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

6Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? 7Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

9I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

12What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13God will judge those outside. "Expel the wicked man from among you."[b]

What a letter Paul wrote to the church. We disected this passage verse by verse last night. This passage really spoke to my heart and I can very much relate to it. It was a blessing for me to be able to share with the group last night some of my past.

The first thing that really struck me was the church's blatant disregard for their sexually immoral behavior. I think one of the worst sin's is knowing what's right and wrong in the eyes of the Lord and still doing what's wrong. I lived that life. But I believe I have a repentent heart and the church didn't find anything they were doing to be wrong. So many people within the walls of our churches today don't believe they are in the wrong.

Such a powerful verse in verse 5, 5hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature[a] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. The desire was to save the soul of the people acting like that but get rid of the sinful nature.

When your making home made bread, it's important to understand that if you have no yeast, it will turn out to be like a cracker. But if you have yeast, it turns out to be loaves of plenty. Just in the same,a little bad yeast can affect the whole loaf of bread--So can one sin here and one sin there turn out to be huge. When I was living for the world, I had a little sin there and here and before I knew it, I was drowning in sin, asking myself- Roxanne, What have you done?

When I came back to the church and recommitted my life to the Lord, it was partly due to the fact that God was fighting for my life. He sent people back into my life that spoke words of encouragement into my life. If it wasn't for Brothers and sister's in Christ coming to me and asking-Where have you been? What's going on in your life? Why are you conducting yourself in this way? I don't know if I would be sitting here, saturating myself in the word, writing this blog. I think we live in such a day and age where there are many people like I myself was in the church, living a life that was not pleasing to the Lord. I feel like we should be encouraged by reading this passage to say something to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ if we see them slipping into a life of sin like I was. It's so important to be unified.

There so much that you could take from this passage and the one big thing for me is Surrender. It always comes back to surrender. It's so important to spend time with the Lord everyday. To fully surrender our lives to him everyday so that we are striving to live that holy, consecrated life that is in line with God's plan for us.