“Sin has consequences. Always has and always will. Keep this revelation fixed squarely in your mind. Because whether we like it or not, here’s how the spiritual economy of life works for believers: Obedience to God garners intimacy and nearness, divine blessing and favor. Always. And disobedience creates a sense of distance and loss, grief and regret. Always” Fervent p.122

Let’s be real for a moment can we?

Talking about sin really isn’t fun. It can be difficult to come clean about the things we like to keep hidden about ourselves. If I look good on the outside, then maybe I don’t have to be completely honest about what’s going on in my heart, or my head.

But like Priscilla says Strategy 7 on our purity…sin has consequences. We see the consequences of that sin all around us. Just turn on the news and it is littered with story after story of our broken humanity.

But if you are anything like me, your sin struggle may be something that isn’t news worthy. And maybe it doesn’t feel like it’s THAT bad…so we hide it away and fancy ourselves up for the outside world. All the while we are suffocating by the truth of ourselves.

In my life I have found that it is those things, those hidden struggles that become the great divide between me and my God. I justify, manipulate, even blame others and then it gets harder and harder to present myself before God. I stop praying because I am aware of my brokenness but too prideful to reach out to a merciful God.

And this friends is right where the enemy hopes to keep us. Apart from God, stuck in sin, filled with shame.

My “hidden” sin, or at least my biggest offender, would be anger.

I have long been a “stuffer,” I feel upset, hurt, whatever and instead of dealing with the way I am feeling about it, I stuff it. Deep down inside where I think it is gone, but at some point I can’t stuff anymore and I explode.

In those moments it is ugly. U.G.L.Y.

It doesn’t matter if I have promised it won’t ever happen again, or if I know that the word vomit that is coming out is causing irreparable damage. I don’t stop until I have said every hateful, horrible thing I could say.

And then, even worse, are those times that I have then refused to accept responsibility for my actions and continue to point the blame on someone else.

“And disobedience creates a sense of distance and loss, grief and regret. Always”

Yes, yes it does.

I have begun to understand the “why” that I stuff my emotions. It stems from wounds long ago. But God has been healing me. I am beginning to discover that while I may have the inclination to stuff and explode, it doesn’t have to be a cycle that I continue. There are alternative ways to deal with my struggles and while I wish I could pray them away and poof they’d be gone. What I’m finding instead is that it has become an opportunity for me to invest in fervent prayer over them.

By bringing my greatest secret struggle out in the open I am free of the weight of it. I never claimed to be perfect but I have longed believed that somehow I needed to strive for it anyways. I didn’t want to share the ugly parts of me because then you would see me for who I am.

Broken.

But in that brokenness I am rediscovering a Savior. A promise that was for me too. A gift that was sent because we all struggle with sin, secret or news worthy. And the only way we could hope to be in the presence of an Almighty, loving God, was by claiming the blood of Jesus over those sins.

I am not pure. I never will be. But because of Jesus I am made pure in the eyes of God.

How can we not celebrate that today?!

Sin separates us yes, but Jesus unites us. Today I am claiming victory over my sin in and only because of Him!

Jesus, we humbly ask Your forgiveness. We know all have sinned and fallen short of Your glory. And yet you loved us. I may not ever fully understand how You could, but I want to praise You for that truth. Thank You for the sacrifice of Your Son. Thank You that we can come and be honest about our struggles and through prayer we can develop a new response. I am not capable on my own but am fully able because of You. Thank You is not enough, may my heart spend eternity praising You for who You are. In Jesus Name, Amen.