Lust is considered by many to be the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. Certainly it's among the most prevalent in our culture. Lust is a perversion of Love. When we reduce another human being to just a body, when we use that body for our own pleasure, we lust. Lust creates shame, hurt and fear of intimacy. The remedy to Lust is Chastity - an intentional movement towards relationships, toward intimacy that is grounded in and ordered by the Scriptures.

Though we equate Sloth with laziness, that's not a wholly accurate comparison. Sloth is being lazy not about our work, but about the demands Love makes on us. To be in relationship with someone else - God, a spouse, family or friends - requires growth and change on our part. Sloth is resisting these changes. Like Lot's wife, we often choose to stay where we're comfortable, someplace familiar, rather than follow God into a new, better, more healthy and whole life. Sloth is the enemy of Sanctification! And sometimes that staying, that refusing change can take a lot of work. We would do well to heed the advice of U2: Walk On! Even when it's hard, even when it's scary, even when it costs us, walk on. Press on. Don't fall back. Walk on!

Though we often think of Anger as a negative emotion, because God created us to feel Anger, it can be a holy emotion. But we live in a culture where it's too easy to be angry, to claim we're just "that way". So what's the difference between Holy Anger and Sinful Wrath?

According to the Bible, Anger is our appropriate response to injustice. But if our view of the world is corrupted by Pride, if we are looking our way instead of God's, our responses will be disordered. That's why the Scriptures tell us over and over to be slow to anger. To stop and think before we react. To let anger serve our judgment rather than the other way around. We are called to be self-possessed rather than hot-headed, vengeful, resentful or irritable. Gentle rather than Wrathful.

Greed is one of those sins we like to downplay. Certainly we don't consider it a deadly sin. But Greed cuts us off from God by making us believe we can take care of ourselves. And it kills our relationships with other people, both in our lives and around the world. The antidote to Greed is generosity: if we give more than is comfortable, we teach ourselves to rely on God, not on our stuff.

One of the challenges of connecting in small groups is getting along with the people who aren't like us. Maybe they have different political or religious views. Maybe our personalities are just like oil and water. Maybe there's no good reason, but they rub us the wrong way. According the Scriptures, we need those people in our lives. We are called not just to tolerate them, but to embrace and welcome them the same way God has welcomed and embraced us.

We understand almost intuitively that certain places are more appropriate to share who we are than others. The checker in the grocery store, for instance, doesn't need to hear our life story. But somehow along the way, Church became a place we don't share who we really are. Those we worship with and minister along side became people with whom we only share our Sunday Best. But if we want true community, we must be authentic. So when you gather with others, are you yourself, or are you trying to be someone else?

Our culture promotes an individualistic, Lone Ranger approach to life. But we weren't created to be alone. Just like eating a balanced diet, living in community with other Christians is vital to a full, healthy life. The Church is most fully the Church God designed when we are connecting with each other throughout the week, not just on Sunday mornings.

Most of us pray when we're facing a crisis of some kind, big or small. Our prayers echo Peter's, when he's sinking in the Sea of Galilee: "Lord, Save Me!" But that sort of prayer assumes that God is Out There somewhere, and we need to get God's attention. The Scriptures teach that God is already working in and around us. We can use prayer to connect with God throughout our day, to call our attention to how God is already working around us, and to join in with what God is doing.

The times we gather to worship are a chance for us to intentionally reorder our lives. All week, we live in a world where it's hard to remember that God is the center of the world, of our universe. So we gather weekly and engage in practices that remind us, that reorient us to that basic truth: Jesus is King. God is the center of our life and being. And we are to be about his mission: bringing the hope of resurrection to a dying world!

We are told in Colossians 1:10 to "live lives worth of the Lord". For many of us, that's a defeatist statement: how can we ever possibly be worthy of God? Others of us read that and decide we must earn our salvation. Our good works can easily be motivated either by fear or obligation. But Colossians reminds us that our salvation is free. That nothing we do can earn OR repay God's favor. We live Christian lives as a response to God's generosity and goodness. We respond out of joy. Nothing more, nothing less!