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Enjoying God Blog

[The following brief article is adapted from my book, A Dozen Things God Did With Your Sin (and three things he’ll never do), and appeared on October 1st at the Crossway blog.]

See Your Sin, Break the Cycle

There are certain people who are just stuck in this seemingly endless cycle of sin. Oh, I feel conviction. Oh, I confess and repent and I receive forgiveness. And then the next day it happens all over again, and they are in this seemingly endless cycle. There are two truths that we have to embrace here. They are not mutually exclusive; they are perfectly compatible.

First, it is a good thing for you to see your sin. You need to feel the conviction of the Spirit on the one hand, but second, God doesn't want you to stay in that mindset. He says, When I awaken your heart to the reality of how you've fallen short, come quickly to the throne of grace and look at the many ways in which I have dealt with that sin. I have put it behind my back. I've buried it in the depths of the sea. I've blotted it out. I've trampled it under foot. I turned my face away from it. I won't gaze upon it.

And it's the power of that truth that will enable us to break out of this cycle in which so many people find themselves. It's a cycle in which they just live in constant fear and trepidation. Oh, maybe I've done it one too many times, and God's just so fed up with me that I'm going to be cast aside forever.

I've actually heard people say, I envisioned myself coming to the Lord once again and him saying, ‘Oh no, not you again. The umpteenth time and are you just expecting me to forgive you over and over and over again?’ And they live in fear that God's just going to run dry and not have mercy, that he's going to run out of grace.

God has said, Look, it's good that you recognize the ways you have failed. I don't want you to live oblivious to the fact that you have disobeyed in an unrepentant and high-handed way. But know this: I have dealt with that sin. The punishment that sin deserves has been exhausted in Jesus. Live now in the freedom and the joy of knowing that you are forgiven fully and finally, and let that be the power to break the cycle of the constant repetitive falling back into these old ways and these old patterns of the past. Live in the fullness of your freedom in Jesus.

 

 

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