God has been telling me about me
God has been showing me alot about my own sin, lately. There was a time a few years back that i came to a friend whom i consider a mentor in my Christianity and said “i’ve been reading the Word and finding all the sins i can. And from what i can see i’ve found most of the written sins and gotten a pretty good handle on them. What next? i know i have sin but how do i find out what it is?” His reply was simply “God will show you.”
Recently, God has been showing me…alot! First, not only had i not found all the written sins; i hadn’t even gotten a good handle on the ones i’d found.
For example, God has shown me how disgusting pride is and how completely unworthy we are of anything. It is all by His grace that we get anything. To start a sentence with “i deserve…” and to put anything besides the word “death” at the end is to lie. We (in and of ourselves) are lowly and useless, worms, disgusting, vile, and putrid. God has made us with amazing talents and abilities, beautiful, and complex. It was His mind that dreamed us up, His hands that formed us from dust, and His breath that gave us life. He is our Creator. And yet we rebelled because we thought we could “be like God”(Genesis 3:4). And like a robot(not that we are robots, we have freewill) that has had a computer glich and rebelled against its creator we deserve only to be destroyed. But God by nature is a redeemer and not a destroyer. So by taking the destruction that we deserved upon Himself, He has been able to not just fix our gliches, but to make an entirely new creation all together(2 Corinthians 5:17). We are not like the man(Adam) who walked in the garden, but instead a new type of being. We serve a wonderful God.
Sorry, I’m off track.
In Summary…pride is gross.
Latest Revelation
The Christian street definition of repentance is to turn away from sin and turn towards God. To characterize my previous understanding of repentance I will repeat the definition but this time changing the font the better show where my emphasis was.
Repentance is to TURN AWAY FROM SIN and turn towards God.
This is, sadly, the most wide-spread understanding of repentance. I believed it for years. I’ve seldom come across someone who has believed different much less acted different. We think we can do it all ourselves. We think that all the burden rests upon us. We try our hardest and strive our best to change our own lives, even though it is impossible. If we had any ability to turn from sin by our own power we could have done it long ago without God’s help, without a cross. If it were true that we could turn from sin ourselves then Christ died in vain. Our Lord prayed “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me” in the Garden of Gethsemane, but the Father’s answer was a clear and distict “No, it is not possible because men cannot turn from their own sin there must be one who is perfect to take their place in death.” (i am not the Father or the Son, nor was i in their presence at this moment in history; i am only stating truth that may have been said) Repentance is not 99% turning from sin with God as an afterthought. Repentance is 99% turning to God and 1% turning from sin. In fact, the only amount of turning from sin we really need to do, is to simply desire not to sin again. If we change our desire, and then depend fully upon God to change us, we will be changed. This is just like the cross, we didn’t work to gain salvation we just desired it, then fully depended upon God to give it to us. Also, look at how wise God is in setting it all up this way. Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God 9 not of works lest any man should boast. If we were to gain Heaven by our own power we would be able to rightly say “I’m here because of me.” But this way we can only say “i am here because of HIM!” Giving all the more glory that is due God to him. So…turn away from your sin and TURN TOWARDS GOD!!