About This Product
Your position is being eliminated.
We’re downsizing.
We are forced to release you.
I’m afraid we need to let you go.
No matter how the boss tries to spin it, the words hurt. None of us wants our paycheck and the security that goes with it to be taken away. We have a life to live, a family to feed and a mortgage payment to meet. No, we’re not being “let go”; we’re being “told to go.”
While it’s painful to be “let go,” it’s sometimes harder to be the one to “let go” of something in our life. One of the hardest things to let go of is our pride. I don’t mean the satisfaction of a job well done, but rather the sense of independence that comes from “knowing” we are better than others. Some of the hardest words to say in the English language are “I was wrong” or “that was my fault.” Sometimes we can even get up the courage to say these words as long as we can think the other person is at least partly at fault.
David, the ancient king of Israel, said something far deeper when he wrote these words while pouring out his heart to God: “My sin is ever before me” and “in sin did my mother conceive me.” We might think that he would try to “let go” of his pride and beg for forgiveness from God, but, in reality, he wasn’t able to. He recognized that he, a highly respected leader, was so soaked in sin that the history of it stretched back to before his birth. He hadn’t just been guilty of a one-time “mistake” but rather of a pattern of disobedience to God that had produced an awful series of disobedient acts, sins. He discovered that sin had hold of him and not the other way around. He couldn’t just “let go” of something that held him in its grip.
You and I have been caught in David’s problem, sin. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We can’t shake free of an evil that holds us in its grip and won’t let go. You could try an experiment of going an entire day without a lust-filled thought, a touch of anger, a deceptive action or a selfish act. You won’t succeed. Even one sin from the past has its penalty. The consequence is that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
Jesus Christ was and is perfect, but He wouldn’t just let us go our own way of sin. We read that God “made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He had every right to life but accepted death and suffered for sin He didn’t commit. Now He can let us go from our prison of sin. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). But if we refuse Him, His love and His salvation, He will eventually let us go the way we have chosen. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3).