Category: sin (Page 3 of 4)

David’s Digest: Sins of the Heart

September 14, 2017 / David & Susan Sifford / 0 Comments

Some time ago I had come across someone giving the example that as long as someone who desires homosexual relations doesn’t act on them, they are okay in God’s eyes, the idea being that if someone abstains from an outward manifestation of sin, they are keeping themselves from actual sin. This idea is what prompted this blog post.

The Bible speaks otherwise of this idea, and calls this concupiscence.

Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines this as:

Lust; unlawful or irregular desire of sexual pleasure. In a more general sense, the coveting of carnal things, or an irregular appetite for worldly good; inclination for unlawful enjoyments.

This is not just in the sexual realm — it covers all carnal desires of the heart.

Here is where concupiscence is mentioned in the Bible:

Rom 7:8 – “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.“

Puritan commentator John Gill says of the concupiscence here:

“The law forbidding every unclean thought, and covetous desire of unlawful objects, sin took an occasion through these prohibitions to work in him, stir up and excite concupiscence, evil desire after all manner of things forbidden by the law; hence it is clear that not the law, but sin, is exceeding sinful.”

Col 3:5 – “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:“

Here Dr. Gill says it

“includes every fleshly lust and inordinate desire, or every desire after that which is not lawful, or does not belong to a man; as what is another’s property, his wife, or goods, or anything that is his.”

1 Thess 4:3-5 – “3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: 4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; 5 Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God:“

Again Dr. Gill, regarding fulfilling the lust of concupiscence:

“for a man so to possess his vessel, is to cherish the sin of concupiscence, the first motions of sin in the heart, by which a man is drawn away, and enticed.”

Acts of sin are only the outward workings of the evil—yes, sinful—desires of the heart. In fact, sin starts in the heart:

Prov 4:23 – “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.“

Luke 6:45 – “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

And here are scriptures talking about the sins of the heart, which is by nature sinful:

Gen 6:5 – “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.“

Psa 28:3 – “Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts.“

Psa 58:2 – “Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.“

Psa 101:4 – “A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person.“

Prov 6:18 – “An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,“

Prov 10:20 – “The tongue of the just is as choice silver: the heart of the wicked is little worth.“

Prov 21:4 – “An high look, and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked, is sin.”

Jer 4:14 – “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?“

Matt 15:18-20 – “18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.“

Acts 8:22 – “Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.“

1 John 3:15 – “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.“

Finally, Puritan Thomas Manton has some words in regards to heart sin:

This is from Manton, vol xviii, sermons upon Proverbs x 20, sermon II, the full text which can be read here:

(4.) That we must make conscience not only of our words, but thoughts. Men are cautious in their speeches and how they discover themselves; but they think thoughts are free. No; heart-sins are sins as well as the sins of the tongue and life : Prov. xxiv. 9, ‘The thought of foolishness is sin’; they are contrary to the law of God. Therefore David saith, Ps. cxix. 113, ‘I hate vain thoughts.’ Usually we take more liberty in our thoughts than in our words and actions. Men will not rob, steal, murder, or assault the chastity of a neighbour’s wife; but let their hearts run riot in coveting, and that is theft in the heart; or lusting, and that is adultery in the heart: Mat. v. 28, ‘Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart’; or malice and revenge, and that is killing in the heart.

And this is from Manton, vol xviii, sermons upon John i 29, sermons II, the full text which can be read here:

Others, if they would be freed from sin, they respect only the preventing the outward act, but you must abstain from the lust [desire] : 1 Peter ii. 11, ‘I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts [desires], which war against the soul.’ If they look after the heart and inward man, it is some branch of sin, not the root, or the change of the heart, and so die impenitent. Evil practices do not flow from a present temptation, but an evil nature. All these lose their labour; they neither get rid of trouble nor prevent the act, nor are free from the breach of God’s law, but Christ would make a thorough cure.

May God change our heart to ones desiring Christ, His righteousness and holiness; may He keep our hearts pure, removing sinful desires; and may He grant us the desire and strength to pray and fight against the sinful desires of the heart!

— David

David’s Digest: My Heart Is Good

August 17, 2017 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

“My heart is good!”

Have you said that, or heard that said? I believe we all think it to some degree, and certainly want to believe it.

But what does the Bible say?

Gen. 6:5 – “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Gen. 8:21 – “And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.”

Jer. 17:9 – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Rom. 3:10-12 – “10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

Rom. 8:7 – “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

Mark 10:18 – “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.”

Ezek. 36:26 – “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

The heart of fallen man by nature is a heart of stone, a dead heart, a desperately wicked heart, is enmity against God, not subject or able to be subject to the law of God, with no desire to seek for God and no good in it. Only some One good can bring goodness to it, and that is the good God, removing the dead heart and giving a lively heart. It is His act of putting His goodness there.

And even if you are truly a Christian, you recognize and lament the evil that is still within you.

Prov. 20:9 – “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?“

From Puritan John Gill’s commentary:

Who can say, I have made my heart clean

The heart of man is naturally unclean, the mind, conscience, understanding, will, and affections; there is no part clean, all are defiled with sin; and though there is such a thing as a pure or clean heart, yet not as made so by men; it is God that has made the heart, that can only make it clean, or create a clean heart in men; it is not to be done by themselves, or by anything that they can do; it is done only by the grace of God, and blood of Christ: God has promised to do it, and he does it; and to him, and to him only, is it to be ascribed;

I am pure from my sin?

the sin of nature or of action: such indeed who are washed from their sins in the blood of Christ; whose sins are all pardoned for his sake, and who are justified from all things by his righteousness; they are pure from sin, none is to be seen in them, or found upon them in a legal sense: they are all fair and comely, and without fault in the sight of God; their iniquities are caused to pass from them; and they are clothed with fine linen, clean and white, the righteousness of the saints: but then none are pure from indwelling sin, nor from the commission of sin; no man can say this, any more than the former; if he does, he is an ignorant man, and does not know the plague of his heart; and he is a vain pharisaical man; yea, a man that does not speak the truth, nor is the truth in him, (1 John 1:8)

And Prov. 28:26 – “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.“

Dr. Gill again:

He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool

Since the thoughts and imaginations of the thoughts of the heart are only evil, and that continually; they are vain and vague, sinful and corrupt; the affections are inordinate, the conscience defiled, the understanding darkened, and the will perverse; there is no good thing in it, nor any that comes out of it, but all the reverse; it is deceitful and desperately wicked: he must be a fool, and not know the plague of his heart, that trusts in it; and even for a good man to be self-confident, and trust to the sincerity of his heart, as Peter did, or to the good frame of the heart, as many do, is acting a foolish part; and especially such are fools as the Scribes and Pharisees, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others, when a man’s best righteousness is impure and imperfect, and cannot justify him in the sight of God; it is moreover a weak and foolish part in men to trust to the wisdom and counsel of their heart, to lean to their own understanding, even it, things natural and civil, and not to ask wisdom of God, or take the advice of men, and especially it, things religious and sacred; see (Proverbs 3:5 Proverbs 3:6)

but whoso walketh wisely

as he does who walks according to the rule of the divine word; who makes the testimonies of the Lord his counsellors; who consults with his sacred writings, and follows the directions of them; who walks as he has Christ for his pattern and example, and makes the Spirit of God his guide, and walks after him, and not after the flesh; who walks with wise men, and takes their advice in all matters of moment, not trusting to his own wisdom and knowledge; who walks as becomes the Gospel of Christ, and in all the ordinances of it; who walks inoffensively to all men, and so in wisdom towards them that are without, and in love to them who are within; who walks circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time

he shall be delivered

he shall be delivered from the snares of his own deceitful heart, which he will not trust; and from the temptations of Satan; and from all afflictions and troubles he meets with in the way; and from a final and total falling away; and from eternal death and destruction: “he shall be saved”, as some versions render it, even with an everlasting salvation. The Targum is, “he shall be protected from evil.”

Finally, here is a warning I believe we should consider from Puritan Thomas Manton from his 2nd sermon on Mark 3:5, which you can read in full here:

4. None are so confident of the goodness of their hearts, as those that have an hard heart: for the more any spiritual disease increaseth upon us, the less it is felt. There is hope whilst there is some complaining of sin, that there is some tenderness left.

The hardest heart must needs be the most confident, because they use no recollection and reflection upon themselves; Jer. 8:6, ‘No man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done?’ What am I, what have I done? Yea they slight their danger, take up every vain pretence and allegation to maintain their carnal peace and quiet: Deut. 29:19-20, ‘And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst. The Lord will yet spare him, &c.’

Broken-hearted christians are sensible of the holiness of God, and what an hard matter it is to hold communion with him, and observe their own weakness and unworthiness; and therefore they complain of the badness of their hearts, that there is no greater bent towards God, and are always suspicious of their spiritual condition.

May God grant us an understanding of our carnal hearts and His holiness, may we humbly recognize from Whom any goodness in our hearts we might have comes, and may we diligently seek it from Him!

— David

David’s Digest: Sin and The Christian

July 6, 2017 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

It seems to me often when people believe they are saved, even if they realize they are a sinner, they lose perspective of sin and their relation to it, almost that their sin in their life generally has mystically disappeared. In fact, we were told one time at a church I attended in the past to not look at ourselves as sinners saved by grace, as we now have a new identity and should look at ourselves that way.

While when someone is saved their sins are washed away from a penal perspective, and they are removed out from under the eternal wrath of God (ie. they are not held as guilty due eternal punishment), it’s not actually like they never sinned, and it’s not like they don’t continue to sin throughout their lives. A saved person still carries with him the carnal man, the corrupt nature, and while they have a new nature as well, the sin nature continues, with its same traits and same evil efforts and desires, although dethroned as ruler, but at war now with the new man.

Rom 8:7 – “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

We continue to carry this carnal man with us during our time here in this life, and this is what Paul laments during his ministry:

Rom 7:24 – “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

Here is what Puritan John Gill says from what Paul desired to be delivered:

from the load of sin, and burden of corruption, under which he groaned, and still bespeaks him a regenerate man; for not of outward calamities, but of indwelling sin is he all along speaking in the context: wherefore it is better by “this body of death” to understand what he in (Romans 6:6) calls “the body of sin”; that mass of corruption that lodged in him, which is called “a body”, because of its fleshly carnal nature; because of its manner of operation, it exerts itself by the members of the body; and because it consists of various parts and members, as a body does; and “a body of death”, because it makes men liable to death: it was that which the apostle says “slew” him, and which itself is to a regenerate man, as a dead carcass, stinking and loathsome; and is to him like that punishment Mezentius inflicted on criminals, by fastening a living body to a putrid carcass: and it is emphatically called the body of “this death”, referring to the captivity of his mind, to the law of sin, which was as death unto him

While reading Puritan Thomas Manton, in his sermons on Genesis 24:63, in Sermon VII, he wrote something I thought most excellently laid out the perspective a Christian should continue to have for sin, and you can read the full sermon here:

4. None are exempted from bewailing the evil of sin. Though the children of God shall never feel it, nor have the dregs of God’s displeasure wrung out to them for it, yet they must bewail the evil that there is in sin. The death and merit of Christ doth not change the nature of sin, nor put less evil into it, why should we look upon it with a different eye after conversion than we did before? Sin is still damning in its own merit and nature, and it is still the violation of an holy righteous law, and an affront to the holy God, and an inconvenience to the precious soul. Sin is the same as it was before, though the person be not the same. Nay, the children of God are not altogether exempted from the effects of sin neither, it is a disease, though not a death, and who would not groan under the heat of a burning fever, though he be assured of life?

God hath still a bridle upon you to keep the soul in awe. And though the godly can never lose their right in the covenant, that doth remain, yet they may lose the fruition of it, and this is enough to make a child of God mourn: Notwithstanding all the privileges of grace, you may be branded, though not executed; and though the Lord hath made them vessels of mercy, yet he doth not use and employ them as vessels of honour, but they are set aside as useless vessels.

Sin will still be inconvenient, it will bring disgrace to religion, and discomfort to your souls, and furnish the triumphs of hell, and make Satan rejoice, and eclipse the light of God’s countenance; and who can brook the loss of God’s favour, and of intimate communion with him without sadness, and bemoaning his case? I may ask you that question, Job xv. 11, ‘Are the consolations of God small with thee?’ Do you make so little reckoning of those rich comforts of the Holy Ghost?

Though you cannot be damned, for there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ, Rom. viii. 1., yet your pilgrimage may be made very uncomfortable; and he that prizeth communion with God, would not lose the comfort of it for the least moment.

Besides, if there were no inconvenience, yet love is motive enough to a gracious person? Where is your love? Christians! You sin against mercy, the warm beams of mercy should melt the heart, Ezek. xxxvi. 31, ‘Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loath your selves in your own sight for your iniquities, and for all your abominations.’ As long as there is love in the heart, you can never want [lack] an argument to represent the odiousness of sin. Put the matter in a temporal case; it would be ill reasoning for an heir to say, I know my father will not disinherit me, therefore I do not care how I offend him. Where is your love to God, if you do not hate sin? Psa. xcvii. 10, ‘Ye that love the Lord, hate evil.’

Though your right in the covenant be safe, yet you should still have the evil of your own doings in remembrance.

May these things be on the forefront of our remembrance, may it keep us humble and in awe of divine grace and mercy, may it elevate the perfectly righteous Lord Jesus Christ, and may God grant us a hatred of sin because it’s an affront to the One we love!

— David

David’s Digest: Of Reviling

April 22, 2015 / David & Susan Sifford / 3 Comments

I came across these verses as I was going through 1 Corinthians in Puritan Dr. John Gill’s commentary:

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 – “9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.“

Reviling is listed here by Paul as a great sin. But what does reviling mean? Here is what Gill says:

Nor revilers;
who are free with other men’s characters, load them with reproaches, and take away their good names; either openly or secretly, either by tale bearing, whispering, and backbiting, or by raising and spreading scandalous reports in a public manner.

That’s pretty clear, and convicting.

Reviling is highly divisive and strife-causing, allowing the devil to drive in wedges, which he knows works to destroy (Matt 12:25). Even secret reviling is a grievous sin. Sadly, I find this in myself at times, for which I ask God for forgiveness and that He grant me repentance and help against this.

Susan’s Musin’s – Journey Into a Proper View of Christian Childlessness

August 16, 2012 / David & Susan Sifford / 6 Comments

While growing up it never occurred to me that I might be sitting here at the age of 49 with no children, or grandchildren for that matter. I always imagined I would get married in my early 20’s and start having children very soon afterward like most everyone else at that time. But I experienced “special bulletins” and “technical difficulties” over many years, and my life screen never got back to its regularly scheduled programming. Somehow the blueprint I had drawn up for my life early on had gotten some coffee stains on it or something. The word “give” had been smudged out of the word “caregiver” (give or take an “e”) at the top of the blueprint objectives, and off I went on a quest for a great “career” instead of what I should have been doing all along according to God’s word. Over time, I became a bit numb and suppressed my innate maternal desires.

Thankfully, the Lord brought my wonderful and godly husband into my life at age 38; and just a few weeks after I turned 40, the Lord brought us together in marriage–the first for both of us late bloomers.

My husband and I, Lord willing, will celebrate our 9th anniversary next week. Early on in our marriage, I thought the Lord might grant us to have a child; but it never happened. Before we got married, my husband and I had sat down for “the talk” and both agreed we were fine if the Lord brought us children or if we never had any. Looking back, I think I truly did feel that way but was secretly assuming and hoping that God would send us at least one child.

During the past several years in learning about God’s sovereignty, I began to study the Bible with regard to this subject. God was gracious to point out to me that throughout the Bible it was He and only He who opened and closed wombs, and that it is He and only He who opens and closes wombs today. After all these years of agrarianism and gardening, reciting 1 Cor. 3:6, where Paul said, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase,” it didn’t click that this applies to ALL provision from God, spiritual and temporal. There is no promise from God that He will provide what we want. It is His decision alone, for His glory. “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” – Romans 11:36. That should have shut me up right there, but my flesh was still asking why.

Note to self: Don’t ask why unless you are prepared for the answer. My mind wandered back through all those years of sewing seeds of sin and unrighteousness, my selfishness, and my oblivion to God’s sovereignty and ways. I realized that God has actually been MORE than gracious to me in protecting me from myself and all of the things that could and should have happened along the trajectory of the path I was walking. It is not mine to question the “whys” and “why nots” of God.

It was not until I started learning in the Bible about God’s intended role for women in being godly helpmeets to their husbands (Genesis 2:18-25) and godly mothers to their children (Psalm 127:1-5), the roles for which we were created, that repentance and regret hit me HARD. I had wasted and sinned away all those precious child-bearing and rearing years in selfish pursuits, with nothing of spiritual value to show for it. I had offended God infinitely with my sin. I had put the spotlight on myself as the victim through my eyes, but God now allowed me to see myself through His eyes. It’s embarrassing and shameful to look back and see all my “boo-hoos” and “why mes” and what a rebellious sinner I was (and still am, but I pray Christ in His faithfulness is still working to conform me into His image). I am eternally grateful to God for His forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ.

I pray that God, in His mercy in showing me my sin and extending forgiveness, brings glory to Himself, and moreover that He glorifies Himself through me in whatever way He pleases.

It would be untruthful if I said my flesh does not still yearn to love, nurture and rear a child with my husband in the way of the Lord, bringing glory to Him; but now Dave and I can TRULY say in this regard that we want what the Lord wants for whatever reason He in His infinite counsel has for us. We know there are adoption and foster care agencies out there tied to worldly systems, but we choose to trust in God completely for all provision, including this. And it has also been encouraging to see all of the faith-building situations in our lifestyle that have translated into maturing our trust in this area.

I pray God may use my journey into a proper view of childlessness to help someone who may be struggling with the same issue. Now, this blog post could have read a little differently, in that, I could have grown up living in obedience to God’s word and been married at a young age with no known impediment to having children, yet my womb could still have been closed. But the conclusion I pray would have been the same: that God, with all of His attributes, is sovereign, which needs to be enough, regardless of the situation.

I’ve purposely tried to stay more objective and less emotional with this post because it truly is not about me. I was/am not seeking pity or encouraging words, but I wrote this in case God might see fit to use it for His glory, and I pray He blesses it to the spiritual benefit of the reader.

Susan

David’s Digest: For What are You Known?

November 25, 2011 / David & Susan Sifford / 1 Comment

I’ve currently been reading to Sue John Owen’s Complete Works, Vol 6, “Sin and Temptation.” Needless to say, it puts a whole different and much more full light on the nature, power and efficacy and infection of indwelling sin in the believer. With in-depth studies of sin being woefully absent from most churches today, sin is not viewed by most who call themselves Christians with the vehement view of its evil and God’s abhorrence of it; it is viewed lightly, and so most professing Christians never examine themselves whether they be truly in the faith, nor whether or not they are living sinful lives, even if they think they aren’t. This will have drastic consequences in the future if not sorted out now, with God’s help and graces. The understanding of sin in a comprehensive way is most important in our living out our lives in obedience unto God. Why? Because if we love God, we will endeavor to keep His commandments, which in part means abstaining and fighting against sin and temptation, which is what we want to do if the Spirit indwells us, and evidences any interest in Christ we might have or not. And so, I would highly recommend Dr. Owen’s volume on this subject.

One of the common and overlying points Dr. Owen makes is that we must hate sin as sin. This means to hate it, and thus flee from it, because it is against God, whom we love. Please pay special attention to what he says about the following:

To fear sin is to fear the Lord; so the holy man tells us that they are the same: Job 28:28, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is understanding.”

Hating and resisting sin is a practical fruit and evidence of a true fear of the Lord! Which means the opposite is true: if you don’t have a detestation of sin that drives you from it, you are lacking Wisdom and Understanding (which are Christ in the Proverbs).

Here is more evidence:

Prov. 8:13 – “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.”

I’m afraid that not enough, if any, of either of those occurs in very many “Christians” of today.

Do you think you have a hatred of sin? If you died today, how would you be eulogized? “He was a good person,” or, “He really loved his family,” or, “He really loved the Lord.” Let me then ask, how would any of that be evidenced? Before you answer, here’s one way that WOULD evidence those things to be true: how do you compare to the following, noted by A.W. Pink in Chapter 7 of his book “The Life of Faith“:

The emperor Arcadius and his wife had a very bitter feeling towards Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople. One day, in a fit of anger, the emperor said to one of his courtiers. “I would I were avenged of this bishop!” Several then proposed how this should be done. “Banish him and exile him to the desert,” said one. “Put him in prison,” said another. “Confiscate his property,” said a third. “Let him die,” said a fourth. Another courtier, whose vices Chrysostom had reproved, said maliciously, “You all make a great mistake. You will never punish him by such proposals. If banished the kingdom, he will feel God as near to him in the desert as here. If you put him in prison and load him with chains, he will still pray for the poor and praise God in the prison. If you confiscate his property, you merely take away his goods from the poor, not from him. If you condemn him to death, you open heaven to him. Prince, do you wish to be revenged on him”? Force him to commit sin. I know him: this man fears nothing in the world but sin.” O that this were the only remark which our fellows could pass on you and me, fellow-believer (From the Fellowship magazine).

Ponder that for a while.

And so, when you’re standing before God in the end, for what will you be known?

— David

Operation: Chicken Peritonitis – Update

January 21, 2010 / David & Susan Sifford / 18 Comments

This is a follow up to the first post on the procedure we did on our chicken with peritonitis.

The week following the first two weekly procedures, her abdomen was filling up again; and she was starting to waddle and stand up straight. And so I went in with the needle, and pulled nearly 70cc of fluid again. This time though the hole didn’t leak anymore. I tried to extract some more with another needle insertion, but nothing came out.

She seemed not too bad after that; but over the next several days, she was still walking quite a bit upright; and on the third day after the procedure, she lost her appetite. It is my experience when chickens get like that, the end is soon. Regardless, I force-fed her some goat milk; and in the evening, she was eating some food scraps on the ground and chicken scratch from my hand, and even drinking the goat milk, all on her own. However, as I said, they’re usually in a bad way when they generally stop eating; and by the next morning she was dead. The Lord was merciful in allowing it finish quickly.

I’m not sure what happened: perhaps I punctured something internally in her; perhaps I introduced bacteria or otherwise during the procedure; perhaps her immunity was low and she caught something; perhaps none of those. I tried to be as antiseptic as possible during the drainings, but perhaps something still got by. (Please also see some of the comments about using an antibiotic/silver.)

It’s sometimes a little difficult when you try to care for something, and it doesn’t work out the way you had hoped, or worse, you worsen the situation. Also with this chicken, I used to be able to “talk” to her by making chicken sounds; and she would respond, which was fun to hear. And it is just an animal, but it’s also God’s provision. Still, it was her time according to His will, and we’re thankful she went quickly; for the allowing us the provision of her; and for what the Lord would teach us, spiritually as well as temporily.

Death — eternal, spiritual and temporal — are a result of sin, and my sin; and I try to be reminded of my sin when I’m around death. And that reminds me to plead the blood of Christ for His atonement as He is the only way of redemption from the wages of our sins.

May He continue to teach us, and we pray and are thankful for His guiding hand in our earthly pilgrimage.

— David

Category: sin (Page 3 of 4)

David’s Digest: Sins of the Heart

David’s Digest: My Heart Is Good

David’s Digest: Sin and The Christian

David’s Digest: Of Reviling

Susan’s Musin’s – Journey Into a Proper View of Christian Childlessness

David’s Digest: For What are You Known?

Operation: Chicken Peritonitis – Update

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