Compared to doing a thing, saying a thing is far easier. It's a favourite refrain of mine. You see it written here a lot:

The saying of a thing has absolutely nothing to do with the doing of a thing. Nothing.

We so easily think that we would never deny the lord or that we could be compelled to deliberately commit sin against him on pain of torture or under duress. We fantasize that the harder our tormentor tries, the more resolute we would become in our resistance.

"Bow down before allah or suffer the consequences",

"Never! Do your worst!"

And yet, capitulation under stress - caving under pressure - that is exactly what we do all the time. We live in a constant state of doing the very thing we swear we will never do.

With only the slightest provocation, and the merest of temptations, we go willingly and gladly to do the very thing we were so certain that we would not do even if tortured!

We think "I could resist!" What a fight we imagine ourselves putting up against imaginary sins! How brave we are! How pleased the Lord will be that we "endured the tribulation to the end" - if only in our imagination.

And yet we offer not the slightest resistance to the actual, real sins in our lives every day, when they come from a source other than duress or fear or threat; from a source that is far more likley to actually find us: temptations of the flesh (that is to say, our "wants and desires").

Far from guarding our hearts against this, we surrender it quickly and freely!

We take too many liberties with our liberty, and we eat more than we actually need. We drink more than we ought. We are easily offended, and indignant that others around us do the things they do - and all the while, we do the things WE do too and think nothing of it.

We are careless with things we ought to be careful with. We despise words like "ought". We are needless.

We lust after and crave things we ought not to. We run after sexual immorality in our hearts (if not outright in our flesh). We require of others what we are not even willing to do ourselves. We cheat, and we lie, we steal... every day. And we are completely (it seems) unaware of it.

I've heard several people mock preachers of the Gospel by putting on a mocking tone and telling us about the "party-pooper preacher" out there who "sins every day in word, or thought, or deed." let me put this straight for you: I sin every single day, not merely in word or thought or deed. But in word and thought and deed - and not every day, but just about every hour. Here's the kicker: so do you!

We do all this without even really seeing what it is that we are doing, because in addition to being sinful, we are also largely blind to our own condition (even though we seem to have a peculiarly keen insight into the condition of those around us).

And here we sit... every last one of us... naked, blind, in the dark, literally reeking of and drowning in an ocean of our own sin, condemning others and thinking to ourselves, "When the time comes, when the persecution comes, when the trial comes... I will not be compelled to sin against my Lord, not even on pain of torture..."

What fools we are!

Jesus has words for us:

"You don't even realize that you already are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked..."

But in his typical style, he never leaves you with only the one side, but quickly follows up with the remedy: Repentance.

That's the word no one wants to hear.