I missed the mark. In fact, I was never able to hit that mark because I felt so guilty and shameful for letting the Lord down. I never went and fulfilled God’s calling until many years later. It was 1991 when I finally surrendered to God and His will for my life, and I have never turned back since then.
It is now 2025, and I have been preaching in prisons all over America and beyond for 34 years. To God be the Glory for taking me back and cleaning me up and feeding me the nourishment I needed. No excuses for me once I grew up. Got to leave the nest eventually. I did, and I have never looked back.
The sins of commission, which is doing what is wrong, are different than the sins of omission. Failing to do what is right is a sin when we know what we should do, but do not do it. We fail for many reasons, but both sins keep us from hitting the mark or target.
Therefore, to him that knows to do right, and does not do it, to him it is sin. James 4: 17.
I have known to do right in the 48 years since the day of my Salvation in Christ. I have chosen over all these years to do wrong, hundreds of times. “Why may you ask?” Several reasons.
One, is the fact that, even though I was a believer in Jesus, I still had a broken heart and was spiritually bleeding to death. I had to have my heart healed. That day came in 1994.
Another reason was not understanding God’s will and trying too hard to find it. We do not have the right to bounce from church to church to find God’s will. We should never go online and look for a prophetic word from a so-called prophet. That too is hogwash.
My financial decisions that were made back then, were not properly prayed through on my part. This cost me a bunch of time and money which was wasted, thinking it was God’s will. All along there were red flags that it was not God’s will. Pride kept me from making good decisions when it came to money back in the 1990’s.
I remember hearing a message on prosperity in a mega-church one morning, and how the “man of the home” should be the priest of his home, and that he should believe God by sowing into that ministry.
Nothing wrong with sowing finances into a ministry that has good soil. In hindsight, I remember I sowed for the wrong reasons. Many of my decisions were selfish. I wanted to look the part of the Christian who is prospering. I did not want people to think that I was not “blessed” and that my soul was prospering in the way that the preacher said it should. In other words, I put the cart before the horse. I had no horse-sense. I was like a mule in my heart. “Hee-Haw.”
I took my older car into a dealership and traded it for a brand-new Lincoln Town Car. I wrote a check to cover the down payment. The only problem was, I did not have the money in my account to cover the down payment yet. I had been promised some money over that weekend, and it did not materialize. I was going to make the check good by Monday, but the check went through too early. To make a long story shorter, the check was bouncing all over that new car dealership floor.
I could not make it good in time, and the dealership called me.
I went to the dealership office and talked with the manager. He was about ready to call the police to turn me in for a bounced check which was large enough for a felony, not a misdemeanor.
“Boy, did I pray.”
Silently, I repented and said to the Lord, I will never do that again. I was stupid and greedy and wanted to be something I was not for the sake of other people looking at me “prospering.”
The moment in my silent prayer when I said, “In Jesus name, amen,” the manager left the office and said he was going to make that call to the police.
Ten minutes went by as I was looking out his glass window of the office towards the main street in front of the dealership. I was looking for the black and white cop cars that were to arrive in minutes.
Fear. Not fear of the unknown. But fear that I was going to be arrested for fraud or whatever the charges were going to be. Jail was waiting for me.
Explain that to your Pastor. Better yet, explain that to my future wife. “OUCH!”
She had no idea what I was doing. She did find out though. Once she saw that new car one evening after I bought it, all she did was shake her head from side to side and rode home with her mother from church. She refused to ride with me. She did not want any part of the new leather smell of a new car. My spiritual stench she smelled was my greed and stupidly.
After the fact, I had to confess all of this to her and that was painful to say the least.
Suddenly, the office manager walked back in with my rubber check, and the keys to my old trade-in car, and said, “I am going to unwind this contract and tear up the paperwork you signed. Here are your keys to your trade in.”
I handed him the keys to the brand-new Lincoln and ran out as fast as I could without running a sprint. God redeemed me, but the humility and the embarrassments that followed were too painful to explain. It is a wonder that my future bride did not explode on me. She wanted to, but because the Holy Spirit showed her what “not” to say, she left me alone in my temporary misery. I missed the “mark.”
My bank also called me in and shut down my checking account. I had to pay the fees for that bounced check, and they had every right to legally pursue charges as well. God redeemed that too. Not because I was a Christian. But because He knew I would learn a valuable lesson about money and prestige.
Lesson number one: All money I earn or is given to me for ministry purposes belongs to Jesus Christ. He is my banker, and He decides where it should go. Secondly: there is no prestige to be had. Thirdly: “IF we do not understand or fully learn these two lessons and decide to be stupid again, then we must refer back to lessons one and two.” Hopefully we will learn the first time. I did. The pride and ignorance on my part were because I did not trust God. I trusted my instincts.
No more merry-go-round with money for me. I learned a hard and fast lesson about my soul prospering.
The mark that I should have aimed my arrow at was truly a target of honesty and integrity.
James 1: 14 declares, “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.”
I should have known better, but the world and my lust of my own flesh and the lust of my eyes and the boastful pride of life, (1st John 2: 16) hooked me like a catfish eating raw liver bait. I swallowed the bait and almost died financially and spiritually.
1st John 3:4, “Whosoever commits sin, transgresses also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law.” Meaning, that this lawlessness emphasizes that it’s not just about specific actions but a disregard for God’s law and His will. It highlights that sin is a transgression against God’s commands and a rejection of His authority. The verse serves as a strong condemnation of sin and a call to repent and then learn a lesson to avoid it completely. Repeating this insanity, will cost us more than we are willing to pay.
When you and I get duped into temptation by our own personal lusts, we look back and can’t see the mark any longer. It is too far away, in a sense, to see because our sin is fogging up our eyes with darkness. Subtly at first.
Then, by continuing in it, the spiritual color begins to change. Next is the gray area. Then charcoal, then full-blown darkness. Blindness ensues and it is very painful to get our sight back because only the Holy Spirit can help us to see again. Outside of this, the man-made efforts to live clean in an unclean world is just a mirage. Our own strength fades in time, and we come to the end of our rope, holding on for dear life.
I would rather repent early on and avoid the consequences of a long-term sinful decision or decisions which will cost much more than our money or time.
So, next time we pull out our bow and our quiver, and reach in for that arrow, stop. Think. Pray. And then pray some more.
If you and I do not have any peace about a decision; seek the Lord. Get counsel that comes with someone who has more integrity than yourself if need be. The Lord Jesus will give us our answer.
We will never hear God’s YES answer, until we obey the NO answer that has already been given to us by the Lord. Just a thought.
I would rather hit the mark in the center of the target.
