An old saying goes like this: “It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out, it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.” Many a man, fearing he cannot cross a mountain, has had to stop miles short because he didn’t take the time to clean out his shoes.<\/p>\n
Failure in the Christian life looks similar. We try so hard to avoid “big sins” – including some we’ll read today- but often underestimate the impact of subtle vices. It’s the sin in our hearts and thought life that are easiest to pretend aren’t problems. Those that others can’t see we often suppress and leave unaddressed. Like little pebbles in your shoe, those unaddressed\/ unconfessed sins will cause you failure in the Christian way of life. If crossing the proverbial mountain = spiritual growth, all sin will cause you discomfort\/ pain and can dissuade you from pursuing the God of the mountain at all.<\/p>\n
How serious do you take the danger of sin in your own life?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An old saying goes like this: “It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out, it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.” Many a man, fearing he cannot cross…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":13230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sermons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/2-Samuel.png?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9J9R0-3zG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13748,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13744\/revisions\/13748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gracepointephrata.org\/fbc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}