Today’s Scripture: Romans 6:13-14

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. – Psalm 107:6

During the height of the Vietnam War, a young man named Larry Bleeker spent an evening in our home in Colorado Springs. He was on his way to Travis Air Force Base the next day. He’d stopped in the Springs to talk to me about what he should do after the war was over and he was discharged from the Marines.

I had known Larry for a number of years. He’d been involved in the ministry of The Navigators at Iowa State University and had become an outstanding young man of God. I asked him what he would like to do when he got out of the service. He told me he would like to spend more time with me and get some further training in the Christian life.

I assured him I would look forward to that, and he left for Travis the next morning and off to Vietnam. Very soon I received a letter from him lamenting the ungodly surroundings in which he was living. He looked forward to being in our home where he could draw closer to Jesus and enjoy a godly atmosphere.

He had already experienced God’s salvation from the penalty of sin and deliverance from the power of sin, but he longed to be delivered from the presence of sin. The next news I received was that he had been killed in action, and I knew he was now delivered from the very presence of sin itself.

Christian, you have been delivered from the penalty of sin, and you look forward to deliverance from the presence of sin, in heaven. But are you experiencing God’s deliverance from the power of sin right now?

Prayer

Lord, thank You for Your great salvation that delivers me from the penalty and power of sin in this life and from the presence of sin in eternity. Amen.

To Ponder

“For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14).

 

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