Oops I Did It Again!
For I do not understand my own actions [I am baffled and bewildered by them].
I do not practice what I want to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate
[and yielding to my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity].
(Romans 7:15 AMP)
Don’t you just hate it when you do the very thing you know you shouldn’t do? We want to do the right thing, we know what the right thing is, but we still do the wrong thing.
You decide you are not going to lose your temper any more, you are not going to allow that annoying person to get under your skin, you are not going to have that second/third piece of chocolate cake. However, you can’t seem to help yourself—you do it again. That bad habit or personality trait you want to overcome keeps rearing its ugly head, like a demonic critter from a Stephen King novel. Mine is a quick temper. I can blame my ancestry, those pesky Scots, or my red hair, but I know this is a lame excuse.
It gives me great comfort to know that Paul struggled with the same issue. Paul was human and, like us, he too struggled with sin. He sincerely desired in his heart to live up to God’s standards and yet he failed again and again. Paul was facing the Christian dilemma of wanting to please God but still dealing with his unredeemed humanness. After we accept Christ, sin no longer reigns in our lives, but it still survives. That’s why we have to ask Jesus to take control of our lives so our old habits and patterns of behavior can be broken. He told us we needed to abide in Him because we cannot walk the Christian walk in our own strength.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing (John 15:5 NIV).
Justification occurs at the moment we accept Christ, but sanctification takes a lifetime. Alan Redpath (British evangelist, pastor and author) said it this way, “It takes but a moment to make a convert, it takes a lifetime to manufacture a saint.”
The one habit I’ve had to learn to break is to stop revisiting past sins. I know, beyond a shadow of doubt, Jesus died for my sins—past, present, and future—and I am washed clean by His blood. But in the past, I had trouble leaving those sins at the cross. I kept going back and retrieving them. I would confess my sins and take them to the cross, then remember them, feel guilty all over again, and retrieve them. I would take them back to the cross, confess them all over again, remember them, retrieve them, and feel guilty all over again. This pathetic, exhausting cycle would continue. I had my sins attached to a yo-yo. It was only when I fully understood grace and that He died for my sins, ALL my sins, that I was finally able to leave them at the foot of the cross.
For God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:19 NLT).
God doesn’t count your sins against you, so why do you? The Creator of heaven and earth says they are no more, so let them go and don’t allow the Enemy to bring them back to your remembrance. If he tries, just quote God’s word right back at him.
I will be merciful when they fail, and I will erase their sins and wicked acts out of My memory as though they had never existed (Hebrews 8:12 VOICE).
No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow (Isaiah 1:18 TLB).
Take your sins to the foot of the cross and leave them there. Step back, take a deep breath, and watch the blood flow down, washing them away. They are gone; He remembers them no more.
Sometimes we breath in Christ’s work on the Cross in tiny, stifled breaths. We thank Him for forgiving this sin, that fault, this situation. God wants us to take a full, deep, restorative breath. One that covers all of life—every past, present or future mistake. When Christ returned us to God’s favor, God completely blotted out every sin (Anonymous).
