O.K…this is a follow-up to yesterday’s post where I talked about why it was good to show your weaknesses and to go ahead and confess whatever sin and crap we have in our life.
This is my part two qualifier to what I said yesterday. While confessing your sin is always a good idea, I have found in my life that staring at my sins or really focusing on them has been counter-productive. This might not be true for everyone, and maybe there are sins out there that need more focus…but the more I “focus” on the sin in my life, the more I find I’m in that sin! Even when I’m trying to “focus” myself through repentance, I find that the thought of the sin is still with me. It is in my mind, it has my attention, it has a space in my heart, it is in my life purview. I used to think reading a book that might deal with my sin was a good way to deal with my sin. But in the end, I find reading about my sin only keeps me focused on my sin, and then I never move beyond it. I only feel more guilt or more shame which spirals into spiritual depression or giving up altogether!
The thing in my life that has most allowed me to move beyond sin, is to confess it, receive God’s grace (which means truly stop thinking about it and beating myself up over it), and place my mind on the reality of God’s grace. Focusing on the depravity of a sin has never led me out of the sin. Focusing on God’s grace for me (even when I still stumble in the same sin) seems to be the only thing that draws me out of my sin.
This seems to me to be the process of renewing my mind. Quit thinking about the garbage and start thinking about God’s grace.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2)
It is interesting to me that when Paul writes his letter to the Philippian church (and specifically to that fight going on with Euodia and Syntyche) he doesn’t tell them to concentrate on their problems, or focus on the nature of their sin, or spend eight weeks going through a book that highlights self-centeredness and conflict. He tells them:
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)
So, in the middle of your weaknesses and sins, let me encourage you to confess them, and then LET THEM GO! Stop thinking about them. Stop focusing on them. Put the book down. Stop the tape/CD series you are working through hoping that it will be the answer to your sin problem. Give yourself as much grace as God does (which by the way is more than you can imagine). Shift the focus of your thoughts away from your sins and onto grace.
My understanding of fthe word *repent* is that it means to “turn around.” That is, to make a decision to turn away from those things. So, I guess that assumes to turn away from “something,” you must first acknowledge that “something.”
And it seems that God’s grace often allows us to see that. (That is, that there is a bad path, and we’ve been on it…)
And then, by God’s grace, you choose to move away from that path, and hopefully, in the context of following Jesus, choose God’s best path instead.
Unfortunately, in the church world at large, we seem to focus more on sin, (and all the hand wringing that goes along with it) and often not enough time on “God’s best path.”
Would you agree?
By: Doug on June 6, 2007
at 12:22 pm
Thanks Sam and Doug! I needed to hear those thoughts. The thoughts from Paul in scripture on being transformed by the renewing of our mind, and also on God’s wonderful grace were great reminders for me. Its hard to not focus on a sin or a problem often-times, but this is a great reminder to trust everyday in my Lord Jesus to handle any and every one of my shortcomings much better than I could ever handle them.
Finally, I want to give a huge thanks to our Lord Jesus for the refreshing and cleansing flood of his uncontainable grace! Words can hardly begin to express how faithful, how loving, and “How Great is our God” (to quote a recent Chris Tomlin song a lot of you know). Consequentially, the song may remind me of God’s biggest work of Grace yet. For those of you who know my wife, you should know how blessed I am to be married to her.
I think Ephesians 2:6-7 sums up what I’m feeling quite well. Here it is, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Chrst Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
Amen! Take care ya’ll!
By: Mark on June 7, 2007
at 1:43 pm
Doug and Mark,
One of the things I love about “repent” in the Bible is that you’re both right. The Hebrew word is about “turning around,” and the Greek word in the New Testament is about having a changed mind. My experience is that each can lead to the other, and that both are part of the package.
And Sam, I have had the same experience. Facing sin is NOT often like grunting harder to try to get the bar up on a bench press. It seems sometimes to be more like distracting a 2-year-old from something they want, and they then happily go to the other thing and forget about the first thing altogether (for a little while). Changing your own focus can be easier than “purifying” your focus. That seems to be God’s job.
By: Kneip on June 8, 2007
at 10:05 am