Sin is a cancer

A bone-marrow transplant can make you wish you were dead. When cancer gets into the marrow, a doctor has to all but kill his patient in order to save him. He destroys the bone marrow with radiation, then replaces it with healthy marrow to get it growing again. If the patient survives, he has a long hard road back from the brink of death. But he is healed.

Seeing God can make you wish you were dead.

When Isaiah saw God on his throne in the temple, the prophet was ruined (Isaiah 1-6). When Job was filled with pride, God loved him and blasted him with his glory from the storm, till Job fell apart: (I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5-6). When Habakkuk saw a vision of God's power, he felt the sickness in his marrow.

I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my
bones, and my legs trembled. (Habakkuk 3:16)

God's terrible majesty is radiation. It X-rays a soul and shows that it's gorged with sin. The soul sees what God is like in his glory, sees what it is like in its sickness, and buries its face in the dirt. Then the healing starts. God's radiating majesty kills the rotten marrow of sin and replaces it with humility. A heart humbled by God's terrible majesty can begin its recovery and grow strong. Sin can't thrive in a humble heart.

A vision of God like Isaiah's or Job's or Habakkuk's can't be made to order. But if we want to put sin to death in our hearts, we have to swallow the strongest doses of God's terrible majesty we can. We find them in our medications on the Word.

--Kris Lundgaard, the enemy within