I HATE SIN! But the problem is...I DON'T! WHICH MAKES ME HATE IT MORE...but is that enough?

I HATE SIN...but the problem is....I DON'T! I just can't get over how incredibly deep sin is rooted in the world and in myself, and how much I really do love to give into sin. Why is it that I am constantly surprised? I have been called naive many times in my life, but apparently I am so naive that I am naive about MYSELF. You would think by now, at this point in my walk with Christ, I would KNOW the depths of lowness in me, and that I would KNOW just how much I cannot trust myself...but somehow, I forget this almost every stinking day...or usually in stints...and then God will pull me back up...somehow my eyes will lose their glazed over look that just accepts so much of my sin as 'ok' and 'not that big of a deal,' and I will actually start living like a person who says she loves Jesus and desires to be His disciple again. But then, like a perverse cycle, my following of God begins to make me feel safe...and my naivete rises back to the surface, and before I know, I'm in the spiral of giving in and denying.

Maybe part of the reason that adolescents and kids and teenagers can just be so absolutely confounding to us adults or parents or teachers is because they are just a microcosm for how the ENTIRE human race is and the ENTIRE universal Church is before God. We are the macrocosm...the DENSE and confounding people before a Holy and Other God. Are we really THAT dense? Yes! Yes we are!

Or, if you are not comfortable with me saying that about YOU, I will just say I AM that dense...although, with all due respect, if you are uncomfortable with me saying you ignore your own sin, then you probably need to be humbled by God a little more. I've been there....and will be there again soon I'm sure...the place where I think 'He's humbled me to the brink...I see Him...I love Him....I won't let go....God give me the grace NOT to let go.' But then somehow, I let go. Does that mean that His grace is not sufficient? Well, if I am going to believe the Bible, then I have to say "No!" The problem is not the insufficiency of grace. Instead, I must surmise that it is the insufficiency of myself to HATE sin enough and to, by faith, HATE the very things that tempt me and seem so beautiful and so promising of happiness. I can't keep believing them...keep seeing them as illustrious and promises of beauty...because they are lies....ALL lies from the Chief Liar who is oh-so-good at his job. Once I begin down the road of pursuit of said 'things,' I surely find myself quickly consumed by something other than obedience to my Father and the presentation of my body as a living sacrifice before Him, (Romans 12:1).

I suppose I'm just so fed up with it! If I could return myself to the store and exchange myself for a different model, I surely would...are all people REALLY as weak as me? I can't imagine so...or else, how in the world has the Church and the heralding of the Gospel survived? Or maybe they all are and have been as weak as me...and it's just because in His wisdom God decided to make it that He is glorified THROUGH our weakness (Philippians 4).

Or to make another analogy, sometimes I wish I could just reformat my hard drive, wipe it clean...not just defrag it, but really start from SCRATCH. The anti-virus software is just not enough to handle the plethora of viruses that befuddle my meager attempts to live holy and honoring to God.

So I'm reminded that it is not my performance as a follower of Christ that gains my acceptance or salvation or justification or sanctification or ANYTHING before Him...Jesus achieved my grace and acceptance. And that right there is the best news I could ever hear because my performance is about the most unreliable thing in the entire world...especially when I seek to control it so that it will be as perfect as I can get it.

The past few days have been a slow unraveling of me as I've been crumbling in my head and recognizing that I am running from admitting my sin and stopping it. I must hate sin more. I must hate it with such a loathing, and I must love Christ more, but I cannot because I am so weak...

But that's where the Holy Spirit comes in, right? This Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead, how will He not surely give us deliverance, right? Oh Holy Spirit, direct my eyes, unglaze them from the haze I am looking through. Knock me upside my head to juggle my thoughts back into the correct spots as currently I feel like I am trying to fit every triangular thought into holes that are square shaped...nothing is fitting...and it's making me more frantic.

I suppose this is my version of Paul's chapter 7...the 'do-do' chapter of Romans as I've heard it called. Because what he does do are the things he does not want to do he says...except he refers to it all in the present tense and says "I do do the things I don't want to do and the things I want to do I do not do." That's a lot of do...and one do do...hence: the 'do-do' chapter. I certainly am on the same page with Paul and cry out, "O wretched (wo)man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of sin!?! THANKS BE TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD," (Romans 7).

So I'm tired now...from a few days of battle...from a lot of denial and then the depressive despair that threatens to overtake me when I finally STOP denying and face up to what I have to- the sin I have to fight away and just how hard it is/will be to fight that sin. There is a Shane and Shane song that PERFECTLY explains this all. Perhaps you have heard of it....Waging War. I couldn't find them singing it on Youtube, but I did find this guy singing it. I have NO clue who he is, but it's good enough for me. The lyrics to this song are everything I'm feeling right now.

Here are the lyrics- follow along and be strengthened in the power of Jesus Christ... Paul's do-do chapter ends, and the next chapter (8) begins with him heralding the assertion that there is NO CONDEMNATION for those who are in Christ Jesus, and that is my only hope now...because without Jesus, there is condemnation all over my face and life.  And you know, Paul didn't originally write Romans in 'chapters,' so his confirmation of our lack of condemnation because of Jesus actually IMMEDIATELY follows his confession of just how sucky he is in and of himself, in his body of deathly flesh. So here I sit tonight, NOT condemned by Jesus even though I should be....I sit here tonight ABLE to pray to God, ABLE to receive His blessings, LOVED FULLY by Him, and I deserve none of it...

AND THE WONDER OF IT ALL....even if I hadn't been on such a downward spiral recently, I still wouldn't deserve it...Megin at her best is a filthy menstrual cloth (as the Hebrew in Isaiah 64:6 ACTUALLY states).  I am so tired of flesh. I want to see Him and be made like Him...but for now, I am in the in-between, where He's working on me to get me THERE...I don't see how I'll ever make it...I have no confidence in myself...my confidence has to rest in His promise to complete the good work He began... Oh Lord Jesus, please complete it. Please don't give up on me. Holy Spirit help me to hate more the sin that entices me and lies to me every.single.day.

WAGING WAR

by Shane Barnard

It haunts me so
This gloomy weight
That comes and goes
Without a trace
A thousand times my flesh embrace
A thousand more but if for grace

To see the Lord, the promise land
Wherein all sin's pearly gates look bland
And what was once a pearl, now sand
That blows away in light of Him

When battle lines become unclear
And the waging war is all I hear
Sustain me with Your voice
And the choice to walk in truth
And by the Spirit

That I might see this day
This waging war might go away
And be no more
That I might see His face
And hear Him say
Son, welcome home
The war is over

"But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ" -- (Phil 3:7-8)
Help Lord!