recentchristian

Sin. What’s with this whole sin thing and us Christians??

Since becoming a Christian, I have understood the cross – I “got” it in my head.  I even had/have a great visual to go along with it.  My visual has been little black pin marks, each one representing every sin of every single person, past present and future, and the marks covering Jesus’ body like tar, inside and out, weighing him down, as he was on the cross, and that black “tar” dripping down his body and painfully covering his body inside and out.  When I first came up with the visual, I wept.  Just imagine taking on everyone’s sins, everyone for all time, and allowing every single sin, small and large, to enter your body willingly.  It sometimes hurts me to walk in someone else’s shoes but this is so much more than just taking a look at the world through the eyes of another.

With this visual I’ve been using for the past nine months or so, I don’t understand why I didn’t understand (until now) just how big of a deal it is to sin and just how much it displeases God to see us take sin so lightly.  Again, I “got” it in my head but didn’t “get” it in my heart.  He gave his one and only Son for us – and I was taking it lightly.  My heart is extremely heavy as I write this and my eyes have fogged over with tears.  I’m getting it/I’ve “got” it in my heart.

I would repent for most external sins (meaning, the things I took action on).  I say “most” because I don’t think I’ve ever repented (until now) for taking part in gossiping – it’s sad that it’s become so much a part of society that most don’t realize that it is a sin.  Now, when there is gossiping in the workplace, I don’t partake – I don’t excuse myself from the conversation either though – I’m a Christian looking for balance, trying to find a new way – I never want to come off as being “better than” so I pray to find a way.

I didn’t repent for internal sins (like desire, lust, not inwardly loving others, unkind thoughts – the list is very long).  Somehow in my mind, I guess I believed that since I didn’t take action, the sin wasn’t as big – I had been classifying sins.

I would like to think I can reach a place where I don’t sin at all but I’m human – the only person that has been able to live a sin-free life is Jesus.  Everyone sins.  I write that more for myself as a reminder to be gentle with myself.  I write it also to non-Christians to let you know that Christians aren’t perfect – we do our best (well, most of the time we do our best to remain conscious enough to do our best) to be more like Jesus – it’s extremely hard though.  We’re human and we will make mistakes – sometimes really ugly mistakes.  The Christian walk is not an easy one – I find that I have to be aware at all times that I just don’t take the easy, habitual path that I have walked for many years – awareness is tough in itself – then going against many things that society sees as normal – that’s even harder.  I suspect that having not grown up in a Christian home, it may be even harder.  I pray now that when I am heading toward sinful thoughts, I run for my Bible (or another Christian book) and immerse myself in that.  My NLP training says when you remove a behavior (like sin), it creates a vacuum and you need to fill that vacuum with another behavior (like reading the Bible – in this case).

In the fall of 2013, I talked with an online friend and he asked me to pray for his soul.  L was afraid. L confided in me telling me of a few sins he committed, one being rape (in his college days) and he was sure he was going to go to hell.  We talked about it for a while and he was truly sorry for his actions.  I reassured him that no sin is too big and that he can truly repent and be forgiven.  I’m not sure if he ended up repenting or not – I don’t think he understood that just because a human may not be able to forgive does not mean that God would not be able to forgive.  We have different logic than God – His logic is divine logic – it’s not really supposed to make sense to us.  I pray that in time, he will understand this.  Interesting – a few friends have asked me to pray for them … Christians don’t have a more direct line to God for prayer than non-Christians – our prayers aren’t answered more.  Again, a topic for another blog.

I have many past sins and it’s incredibly reassuring to know that when we truly repent, because of the cross, we are forgiven.

God is great.  God rocks.  He is a rock.