Chapter 07: Sin and Struggle

[00:00:02] Chapter 7 sin and struggle Questions what comes to mind when you hear the word sin? [00:00:10] How do you understand confession? [00:00:14] Do you have anything that is a consistent spiritual struggle in your life? Take a moment of silence to ask the Holy Spirit to show you as you have pursued things in your life that require discipline, spiritual or otherwise, have you felt the need for accountability? [00:00:31] If so, is there anyone in your life that shares your convictions and could provide accountability? [00:00:39] What is Sin? [00:00:41] Once again we find a word, sin, that comes with baggage. We hear it and imagine a scowl and follow up words like abomination and punishment. Biblically, the word sin literally means to miss the mark. [00:00:54] Sinning is missing the intended target and the degree of sin is the distance from the bullseye. [00:01:00] Thinking of this in terms of humanity and God, we see something interesting. God has created us for a specific life. In Genesis chapter one we see that this intent was very good. [00:01:12] God has a good intent for us and sin is missing that good intent. [00:01:17] If good is what we aim for, missing is bad. [00:01:21] All good and bad are ultimately founded in reality rather than a cosmic grading system. So good is good for us, God and the world, and bad is bad for us, God and the world. [00:01:34] To put it simply, our sin hurts us and our sin hurts others. [00:01:40] It's missing God's good intent for us, so it's inevitably bringing harm to the world. [00:01:45] We were each born into sin. This is often called the fall in Christianity. It means we were born into a world marked by sin and our first instinct is to sin. [00:01:57] In the world of counseling, sometimes addictions are described as coping mechanisms. We did our best to overcome this. Fear, pain, etc. And alcohol, porn, drugs were the best way we could find to cope. We've all been wounded and we turn to harmful things, sin, to find relief. [00:02:15] Not out of some sort of high fisted rebellion, but out of desperation. We all have also bought into sin if we're willing to be honest. We have also done things that we knew were wrong and harmful simply because we wanted to. It was out of high fisted rebellion and we chose it. If we want to find freedom, we have to be willing to see ourselves as both self seeking rebels and scared kids, victim and villain. Both are true for all of us. [00:02:46] Most of us in my experience, have a hard time accepting one or the other. [00:02:51] Some of us find it easy to take responsibility for our wrongdoings. We are fine with having been rebels because it gives us control. [00:02:59] We don't have to look inward at our fears to be rebels. We just have to take the blame. [00:03:05] Some of us have an easier time seeing ourselves as a scared child. [00:03:09] We find it harder to take responsibility for our actions. [00:03:13] Both are essential, but we need to pause for a second. My intuition is that most readers think about all those other people who have a hard time admitting their sins and taking responsibility. [00:03:25] My experience tells me that it is actually more common for us to take responsibility for our sins than it is for us to look with compassion on the scared child in each of us who did what we felt like we had to do. [00:03:39] We do not look at our wounds because that means dealing with emotions that are complicated and hard. [00:03:45] As American Christians, we generally do not like to engage our emotions, but God gave them to us, both men and women. [00:03:53] May we not be people who would reject things that God delighted to endow us with? To be frank about my opinion, I think that is why porn addiction, substance abuse, anger, pride, and even many marriage problems are so common, and they are an endemic epidemic in the American church. [00:04:11] It is because we do not find freedom until we see the root of the problem. [00:04:17] The root is in both our rebellion and our fear and shame. [00:04:22] Both of these pale in comparison to how deeply we are loved. We have to learn to embrace that God looks at us with love and mercy. John 3:17 says, For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. [00:04:40] Our ideas of sin are founded in our understanding of God's character. If we believe he is good, we will trust that when he calls something sin, he is telling us that the thing is harmful to us physically, spiritually, relationally, etc. Romans 6:23 NIV says it like the wages of sin is death. [00:05:00] In other words, sin is death work bringing harm to the world. It is because of God's mercy and kindness that he would warn us. [00:05:08] Another beautiful example of this is found in Genesis 4 Cain gives a gift to the Lord that reveals his heart does not trust him. [00:05:17] God doesn't respond with condescension or condemnation. He responds with a warning. Sin is crouching at your door. [00:05:25] When we talk about sin, we're talking about God's goodness. We're talking about the depth of his forgiveness. We're also talking about the otherworldly invitation to live a life that is not bound by the harm of sin. [00:05:40] What do we do with sin? [00:05:42] Personal introspection is the first step to a life of freedom. Can you see the sin in yourself, the lies you believed in and the tendencies you have in response to those, both emotionally and spiritually? [00:05:55] Now that you've begun to Learn to sit in the presence of God in prayer and Scripture. Can you sit in the presence of God and allow him to reveal sin, lies or wounds in your heart? [00:06:06] Since we see what sin actually is, both in its damage and in God's goodness, we can look at our own sin without shame or condemnation. We can see it as a true part of ourselves that we want to turn from instead of a secret we need to hide or hide from. [00:06:23] Pastor and author Dr. Hank Williams says that we need to see sin spiral. [00:06:29] Can we see how a small thing like a lie grows a garden of harm in our lives? Can we also see how the garden of harm in our life sprung from the small seed that we allowed to be planted because of fear and shame? [00:06:42] Seeing a sin spiral means looking at ourselves with mercy instead of blame, but also looking at ourselves with truth so that we can surrender the sin to the Holy Spirit and experience healing. As we begin to look inward, the next step is to decide how badly we want to be free from sin. [00:06:59] Many Christians never really accept the truth of what sin is and therefore never really care enough to seek freedom. We never see the garden of harm because we don't actually look for it. Or maybe we only look in obvious places. [00:07:14] We look at Internet search histories or substance abuse instead of the way we treat parents, spouses or friends or the way we talk about ourselves to ourselves. [00:07:24] We settle for a cosmic grade perspective of sin so we think of looking at porn, gossiping or white lies in the same way we might see getting a C on a quiz. It's a bummer, but it's not going to hurt my gpa. [00:07:38] We look at internal sins or less obvious sins, for example Lust, harmful, self talk, domineering our spouse or kids as not harming anyone else, or that it's just the way we are. [00:07:49] We each have to make a decision to pursue freedom. It starts with understanding the truth of sin and God's love. The next step is to actually decide to fight to overcome whatever that sin is. [00:08:02] If you want freedom badly enough, inconvenience will not keep you from it. [00:08:07] Accountability Every person needs someone who knows everything about them and everything means everything. [00:08:15] You need someone in your life who loves Jesus and loves you. You need someone who knows that sin is killing you and wants to see you free from sin while also loving you despite your sin. [00:08:26] That person needs to know the details of your life. [00:08:30] What do you struggle with? When do you struggle with it? What type of things do you struggle with? [00:08:35] What triggers your struggles? Everything that person is not there to shame you. When you sin, that person is there to fight alongside you, to call you to a higher standard because they actually believe in you. [00:08:48] They pray for you, they encourage you. They challenge you. They rebuke you. [00:08:52] Biblically, this is part of the practice of confession and repentance. When we confess something, it loses much of its power. We experience the fullness of forgiveness when we fully confess our sins. Repentance is the idea of fully turning away from something. If we fully confess, that means we see the danger and are empowered to turn away and choose something else. [00:09:15] The Holy Spirit is in all of our hearts, revealing sin and inviting us to confession and repentance. The Holy Spirit is also in the hearts of our accountability partners, moving them to grace, compassion and forgiveness. [00:09:29] The Holy Spirit is the empowering change agent in our lives, and accountability is a way in which we partner with the transforming work of the Spirit. This is a manifestation of bearing one another's burdens. From Galatians 6:2 where accountability often fails is when someone decides to be honest but not forthcoming. Here's what we mean by that. We wait to get asked and only answer in the easiest generalities. What we say is true, but it's passive and incomplete. [00:09:58] In James Chapter five, we are instructed to confess our sins to one another and not to answer when our friends ask us if we are sinning. [00:10:06] If you truly want to find freedom, it is your responsibility to initiate confession. [00:10:12] Within this accountability relationship, we have to be willing to call things what they actually are. If you struggle with gossip, then that phone call wasn't just sharing concern for a friend. That maybe went a little too far. It was a sin and it did damage. That YouTube video wasn't not really porn, but I probably still shouldn't have looked. It was lust, and lust is sin. [00:10:34] Practicing Freedom from Sin now that we've laid the groundwork, there are some simple tactics we can apply in areas that we struggle with. [00:10:43] Cut the supply this is going to seem obvious, but if there is something that is a consistent temptation for you, then you should avoid that thing. [00:10:51] While this sounds obvious, it is a hard step for a lot of us. For those of us who struggle with pornography, avoiding the Internet or finding a strong accountability software like Accountable2You or Covenant Eyes is a necessary step. For those of us who struggle with alcohol, keeping it out of our homes and staying away from bars is a right step. [00:11:10] If you deal with comparison and envy, then you should avoid social media. It's hard to reorient our lives to God's good design when we are bombarded by temptation. [00:11:20] Oftentimes the first step to victory is to cut the temptation off at the supply. [00:11:27] Turning away from something only helps if you are turning towards something else. Fill your mind with scripture and use temptation as a reminder to pray. [00:11:36] Filling your mind with scripture helps weed out the lies of the enemy and provide a supply of truth when you need it. Redirect your mind. A common pitfall to dealing with temptation is to simply sit in the feeling of temptation and try to handle it. The reality at that moment is that we don't want to say no to the sin. We just feel like it's the right thing to do. We often want to use an excuse like the temptation was too much. [00:12:03] What we actually mean is we don't believe it's really that harmful, so we didn't take the chance to avoid the sin. A great way to move yourself out of the moment of temptation is to use it as an opportunity to pray or seek the Lord in other ways. Pray for someone else. Read scripture. Take the chance to pray for victory in someone else's life and use that moment of struggle as a catalyst to fight the works of the enemy. Sometimes choosing growth is as simple as actually leaving the physical place we are in to do something healthy inside. Instead, go cook a meal, read a book, call a friend, etc, do something good for your body and soul to replace that temptation. [00:12:43] Abide daily. [00:12:45] We've already had a long conversation about abiding with God. This is crucial to every area of our lives as disciples. The more time you spend abiding, the more the Holy Spirit will work on your heart and transform your desires. The Holy Spirit is the change agent and abiding invites the Holy Spirit to enact that change. [00:13:06] Our prayer comes from the Book of Common Prayer and is a historic prayer of confession used by followers of Jesus for generations. [00:13:14] Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. [00:13:30] We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. [00:13:33] For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen.