This morning as I was praying and getting ready for work I thought about the ways we often try to justify our sins. How we often hide even from ourselves that the things we are doing are wrong. We tell ourselves comforting things like it's just a book, who cares if there's sex in it I'm not watching porn, it's not lust controlling me, or me feeding it. It's okay if I tell a white lie, no one will know and it will spare their feelings. It's okay to treat this person badly because they never do anything good for me any ways. It's okay for me to go out and have 'fun' at the club like other people, to get drunk and rowdy, after all I'm not as bad as so-so, they do it all the time. Or I'm such a good person most of the time so it doesn't really matter if I sin in this way because my good out weighs the bad and I can just ask God's forgiveness and everything will be okay.
We want this to be the way it works, we want it to be okay to have Jesus and our sin. We want to hold onto Him and blindly ignore the faults in our character, the sins that lurk below the surface and keep us from getting to new levels of glory in Him. We want to believe that we can just say I'm sorry and go on living with that sin and that everything is okay. But let me ask you this, how sincere do you think someone is when they say they are sorry and keep on doing the things that they shouldn't be? How sorry do you think someone is when they apologize but they don't even understand what they did wrong in the first place and don't care to really find out? I'm not trying to come down anyone today, but I am trying to get you to look honestly at yourself and your actions.
This is something that God has been walking me through in myself. He has been having me strip away my justifications and really look at my actions, look at the root of what they are and where they come from. Something which resulted this weekend in a huge internal struggle as I did my best to resist the temptation first on my own, then by focusing on the King. It wasn't easy, I almost failed as it overwhelmed me and my mind went through all the ways I could justify my action, but as it did, for the first time I saw clearly that was what I was doing, justifying an action to soothe my conscious and make it okay in my own mind. Seeing that and being honest about it with myself enabled me to do what I always had the power to do, I called on Yeshua, and I talked to Him. I focused on Him, and soon the temptation left me all together.
For months I have prayed for His strength to stand up to these things and do right by my Father's standards. I have asked for forgiveness and continued in the sin. I have justified my actions and then let guilt weigh on my mind. In the moment when the temptation came about I would give in, ignoring the voice that called me another way and let my desires take full reign. But finally this weekend I saw what I was doing and called on Jesus in that moment of weakness. I realized that all these months I had the strength and the secret to overcoming these sins but did not use it, because honestly part of me wanted to keep doing it. This struggle humbled me, it reminded me that though I may sometimes see myself as righteous I still have a long way to go, and it also reminded me that the secret to overcoming any temptation is being in communion with God. That it is not by our strength that we resist the enemy but by His.
Brothers and sisters, today I ask you to look honestly at your hearts, what actions are you justifying? What things have you tried to hide from yourself in order to protect that sin? What is the root of your action in this area, grace or sin? Look to your heart, and examine it not by man's standard but by the standard of a righteous God who says that to look at a woman with lust is to have committed adultery (Matthew 5:27-28) and that to hate your brother is murder (Matthew 5:21-22). Be blessed in the name of our risen Lord Yeshua.
1 Corinthians 10:13
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Galatians 5:16
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Hebrews 2:18
For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
James 4:7
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
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