Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Secret Sin
Today I finally called out to God to ask for his forgiveness for my "secret sin" and for his help to stop doing that sin. It was really a relief to finally be able to come to God and to honestly desire forgiveness. I've known for a long time that this was something I needed to deal with, but I avoided doing so because I wasn't actually ready to stop sinning until today.
Plus I had/have a lot of guilt over this particular sin, since it's a problem that's been reappearing for the past, I don't know, six to eight years. The last time I thought I had it dealt with was just before, through, and for a while after Grenada. I even talked about it in one of my testimonies. But then I started being tempted again during the year after Grenada, and this year it became a consistent issue, but I basically gave up trying to deal with it.
Consistently re-occuring sins are really the worst ones for me to deal with--especially when it's as clearcut of a sin as mine was/is. The more times I repeat the cycle--sin, regret, repent--the longer the time between the different stages. So although I'm extremely relieved/thankful to have finally reached the point of sincere repentance this time around, I'm really scared that the cycle still hasn't been broken. And I feel like if I go through this again, my heart is going to be so hardened to the sin that I might not come to repentance for years. I mean, this time it took almost a year and a half for the complete cycle, and I don't want to be sinning and grieving God for such long periods of time.
You know that passage in Romans about not abusing God's grace (Romans 6)? Well, that's what I feel I've been doing this past year and a half, increasing my sin, tesing and abusing God's grace.
This probably won't make sense to most people, but if anyone from the Grenada team is reading this, I especially ask you to please continue to pray for me in this matter.
Today I finally called out to God to ask for his forgiveness for my "secret sin" and for his help to stop doing that sin. It was really a relief to finally be able to come to God and to honestly desire forgiveness. I've known for a long time that this was something I needed to deal with, but I avoided doing so because I wasn't actually ready to stop sinning until today.
Plus I had/have a lot of guilt over this particular sin, since it's a problem that's been reappearing for the past, I don't know, six to eight years. The last time I thought I had it dealt with was just before, through, and for a while after Grenada. I even talked about it in one of my testimonies. But then I started being tempted again during the year after Grenada, and this year it became a consistent issue, but I basically gave up trying to deal with it.
Consistently re-occuring sins are really the worst ones for me to deal with--especially when it's as clearcut of a sin as mine was/is. The more times I repeat the cycle--sin, regret, repent--the longer the time between the different stages. So although I'm extremely relieved/thankful to have finally reached the point of sincere repentance this time around, I'm really scared that the cycle still hasn't been broken. And I feel like if I go through this again, my heart is going to be so hardened to the sin that I might not come to repentance for years. I mean, this time it took almost a year and a half for the complete cycle, and I don't want to be sinning and grieving God for such long periods of time.
You know that passage in Romans about not abusing God's grace (Romans 6)? Well, that's what I feel I've been doing this past year and a half, increasing my sin, tesing and abusing God's grace.
This probably won't make sense to most people, but if anyone from the Grenada team is reading this, I especially ask you to please continue to pray for me in this matter.
