In my life group at church last week we talked about prayer and how we must continually confess sins in our life and repent before we can resume a right relationship with God. We figured that if we left it for too long we tend to sink into a bout of depression from guilt, or ignore the sin altogether thinking we’re cool with God. I realized that I tend to completely skip this confessional on most days. Sure, I have a quick chat with God in the morning before rushing to work, or send a desperate plea his way when my experiments aren’t working, but I don’t have regular sessions of “detox” where I confess all my sins and ask him for help. When I used to live in England I partied a lot. But the summer I really started to get to know him I realized that the lifestyle I was living had nothing to offer me, it was only a quick fix and that I was very much still broken inside. I don’t believe that drinking a glass of wine or a bit of alcohol at a party is wrong, but because I was used to overdrinking previously I didn’t know how to control what I drank. I always started out with the best of intentions, to only drink a little, but one glass quickly became three, and being a lightweight when it came to alcohol, I was quickly at that stage of drunkenness. I struggled with confessing this sin to God for months being too ashamed and at other times too proud.
In Exodus 32:10 God plans to punish the Isrealites for their idolatry and says to Moses “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” Even though it’s sweet how God still plans to make them into a great nation despite his anger at them, I can’t help but think that God was different in those days. He seems more vengeful and less “easy-going.” But I think this is a trap that at least I tend to fall into very quickly: to think that God lets our sins just slide because we’re saved. God loves us and we’re under the new covenant, but he is still the same God he always was. Just like you gain a deeper understanding about a person you love through their actions, we have to seek God through his characteristics. He is a jealous God that yearns for us to spend time with him and rely on him. He designed us with those needs. He also punishes. It’s hard to hear, and kind of harsh, but it’s reality. He punishes because he doesn’t want to support or condone sin. If he passively maintains a relationship with us despite sin in some area of our lives, he’s condoning it. Is he blesses us while we’re sinning he’s supporting it. If he doesn’t discipline us, he’s not correcting it. So we can see why Godly discipline is a necessary part of our “growing pains.” Right now I think I’m in my spiritual adolescence: rebellious, confused and constantly worried about what my peers would think about my faith. God’s calling me to step forward to the next level. He’s so good and loving beyond all understanding, that it’s a bit of a shock when we get disciplined. But any loving father, he does it for our good , so that we realize that something needs correcting in our lives.
As I start the 23rd year of my life (feel so old!), I hear God saying to me that I wasted enough time. He wants me to catch up to my physical age in spiritual years. I can’t stay a baby teen christian forever. Sin has to be continually swept out of my life in order for my growing-up to happen because, like 1 John 5 says:
“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we life and do not live by the truth”
As I start the 23rd year of my life (feel so old!), I hear God saying to me that I wasted enough time. He wants me to catch up to my physical age in spiritual years. I can’t stay a baby teen christian forever. Sin has to be continually swept out of my life in order for my growing-up to happen because, like 1 John 5 says:
“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we life and do not live by the truth”
