The Sin Problem

Do you sometimes want to do good but you find yourself just doing the very opposite of what you wanted?

Do you ever struggle with addictions, self-pity and worthlessness? Sometimes feel that Heaven is for the few and you are not among them? Do you often feel discouraged, disconnected from the so-called saints and you feel home is too far for you? 😭

Fear not, nor be dismayed, for I am the Lord (Is 41:10). I will purge you with hyssop that ye may be clean (Ps 51:7). I will cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). I will hold thy hands and hide you in the cleft of the rock (Exo 33:22). Yea, though thou walkest through the valley of the shadow of death, thou shalt fear no evil for I am with thee (Ps 23:4). 😇

Such are the Lords promises to us that we need to hold on to. It’s not easy but He has promised and He never changes nor does He err. 🤗

Well, I did very nasty and bad things before I had an experience with Jesus. Before, I had a mechanical way of doing things. I would go to church because it’s what used to be done. I would lead and sit in church meetings because I was given responsibility. I would pray because it was in my timetable. But I did not have an experience with Jesus. So I ended up like the Israelites in Exodus 19.8, reiterate, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do” for fear of what may befall them (me). 💃

Little did I know that it is “not by power nor by might but by the Spirit of God”. Zech 4.6 . And so, just like the struggle in Romans 7 and I quote verse 19 “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”. I ended up falling into the miry clay of sin. I ended up believing and trusting in salvation by works. That by being good and doing acts of kindness I would merit Christianity, I would merit heaven. The law proved more important than the maker of the law and voila an ‘extremist’ was born. 🙆

It depends on how you take extremism to be, but this is my interpretation of what became of me. I judged people, I condemned them, I compared myself to them. Like the Pharisee, I sat on the judgment seat and began to point specs on people’s eyes. Little did I know that my eye had a spec that had grown into a log. Somehow, Jesus covered my unrighteous filthy rags with His righteousness and some believed and came to the knowledge of the Saviour. But the Angels mourned for the souls I had turned away from Jesus because of being this person. 😭

I thought I was zealous for God, like Saul, 🤷 I purposed to scare people all the way to Heaven.👎 A slave of the law without the consolation in Romans 8:1, That “there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”. I did all these as a slave to the law until my struggle of keeping the law was too hard. Yes, I delighted in the law of God after the inward man, but I saw another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me to captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 🤕

Then I realized that yes indeed He says in Philippians 2.12 that we should “work our own salvation with fear and trembling” but again He says in verse 13… “For it is God which worked in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure”. I just needed to ask of Him to free me from my sins, my addictions, my besetting sins, the sins I triumphed over, the ones He had made me triumph over but I kept falling back, yes He said that it is my responsibility in Hebrews 12.1,2… I am also “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” (Those He wants to save through His power in me) , that I should “lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset me” (the ones I kept on going back to) and that I should “run with patience the race that is set before me” (yes though I may grow weary), “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross for me, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. Amen.

All this just for me and many more in His word. Today I encourage us to start all over again, that you and I be baptized with fire and be transformed by the renewing of our minds to do that which is acceptable, good and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2). That we may have an eye single to His glory and that He being lifted up may draw all people to Himself.

PRAYER

Lord mold me and make me after Thy will, while I am here yielded and still. Let me sigh and cry for my sins and the abominations also that happen in the house of God. Wash us that we may be clean and lead us to the rock that is higher than I. AMEN.