Recently I’ve been beating myself up over a question that parades through my mind regularly.
“How did you let that happen?”
I think back on my life past, and I ask myself this question about many situations. I go down the mental path of different scenarios of what I could have done – but I didn’t.
Sometimes my regret gets out of control. I just dwell on the past so much that it becomes an obsession.
We’re on chapter 4 on our Lies Women Believe Summer Bible Study this week – Lies Women Believe about Sin. You can get all the handout’s here.
I think that from the outside looking in, maybe from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know Jesus, I look like I have my act together. At the moment I don’t struggle with any of the, what you would call, “big sins”. I don’t have a problem with partying or alcohol or smoking or drugs or promiscuity or pornography. I’ve never even been one to cuss.
No, instead my sins lie on the inside where no one can seem them. I struggle with things that people may not even think of as sin but instead just think of as human nature – pride, jealousy, haughtiness, gossip, eating for comfort, having a critical spirit. I could go on, but I won’t.
I often think that when a person submits her life to Christ and becomes a Christian, it’s the outside sins that God deals with first. You know the ones that aren’t socially acceptable. The partying stops. The alcoholic gets sober. The drug addict goes into recovery. The promiscuous girl settles down. And suddenly there’s clean talk from their mouth. This is when you may think you’ve arrived and all of your sin is taken away.
Then you find there’s a whole other group of sins hiding, that no one sees, and you realize the depth of your brokenness. With full intentions of not comparing yourself to the cute girl in class, you compare yourself anyway. Jealousy hangs there and then leads to hating her even though you don’t even know her. Or you find being critical or gossiping after promising yourself that next time you’d just keep your mouth shut.
Sometimes I tell myself that my sins are not as bad as other people’s “bigger sins” and so they’re no big deal. “At least I don’t party, smoke, drink, cuss, or sleep around, right?” This is what goes through my mind. The funny thing is I don’t feel any “cleaner” for not doing these sins. In fact, I feel just as messed-up. Why? Because “my sin isn’t as big and is no big deal” is a lie that Satan wants us to believe to keep us separated from God.
At the core of our being we are sinful people and without Jesus there is no way to make ourselves right again. All sin, even sin at our core, separates us from God. The longer we walk in our relationship with Jesus, the more we realize just how dependent we are on Him for our every breath. Awareness of our sin because greater and our brokenness becomes too much to handle.
I’ve come to realize that these “little sins”, that aren’t little at all, keep me in just as much bondage as partying or sleeping around or whatever. Even though the consequences might be different, my little sins carry just as much weight as bigger sins. This is the truth that God wants me to remember, and the truth that will set me free.
Share with me! Do you believe the lie that your sins aren’t as bad as other people’s “bigger sins”?
Today I listen for the curtain of the temple being ripped in two from top to bottom. The curtain that shielded the Most Holy Place from view. The curtain that separated mankind from knowing and relating to our Heavenly Father personally. The curtain that only the High Priest could enter through to offer a sacrifice for our sins. (Hebrews 9:1-14)
