Voice of Truth: 4th Edition, July/August 2021

Gospel Grace Written by Leecy Barnett Recently I bought a blouse and charged it to my department store credit card. Because I forgot to tell the store my email had changed, I did not pay the bill until I was awakened one morning by a call from the collection agency. I ended up paying three times what the blouse originally cost.

Debt is like that; it sneaks up on you and, before you know it, you are being squeezed to death.

Just before the pandemic hit, World Bank statistics showed that household debt in sixteen countries, including the United States, China, Australia, and the UK, was greater than their gross domestic product.

Talk about spending more than you earn! Then just like an earthquake, COVID-19 hit the world with a vengeance. Death and economic devastation spread across the globe. Millions of people lost their jobs, and the debt that had seemed like just a way of life began to overwhelm the debtors.

In the same way, we can sin and sin and sin some more and think nothing of it. But sooner or later, your sin will catch up with you, or as it says in the Bible, …be sure that your sins will find you out. (Numbers 32:23 NIV) Sin is one of those churchy words that has fallen out of favor in our modern world, so we need to define our terms: Sin is “actions by which humans rebel against God, miss His purpose for their life, and surrender to the power of evil rather than to God.” In other words, sin is living my life my way, meeting my needs, paying little or no attention to God. Since sin reflects the inner condition of the heart, people who seem to be very good and even religious are often the worst sinners. (I should know as 8