So I have happened upon and heart-breaking truth. This happened a few years back but recently all of my thoughts and experiences have kind of come together and I understand better now what I have been seeing.
When people ask when I accepted Jesus as my Savior I will tell them, “When I was five.” Then I will quickly add, “But I didn’t ask Him to be my LORD and Savior until I was 21. And I didn’t care to follow Him until then.” Please let me explain.
We see in Proverbs and in 2 Timothy how when a child is trained in the Lord’s ways he will always have that to come back to. My parents did a great job raising me in the church. I learned the Bible stories and I definitely had moments in which the Holy Spirit spoke into my life but I never reached a point to where I wanted to allow God to lead my life.
I left home to go to college and that was definitely a place for me to grow in my faith. I had an incredible godly young woman for a roommate who was such an encouragement and leader in the faith. I also had some very vocal godly professors. I attended church, read my Bible, and participated in “extracurricular God-stuff” but still only knew Jesus as a saving mechanism.
At the same time I said I was trusting Jesus as my Savior, I was seeking other ways to be validated whether it was through the people I was with, the activities I participated in, how well I did in classes…you name it. Nothing was fulfilling.
And one night in my dark little dorm room I fell on my knees weeping (for the first time in my life) and in between sobs cried out to God! Interestingly enough, I wasn’t crying out for Him to save me but to take my life and lead it. Guide it. Own it. That was the first moment in my life that I desired to declare Jesus as my Lord as well as my Savior.
My faith and my life have not been the same since! Not at all!
We all have sins that we struggle with. For me there were some that I just couldn’t rid my life of! I would hear sermons that would be encouraging and helpful in either strategizing how to abstain from participating or to confess and seek forgiveness.
In growing in my faith, I have been made aware of the fact that what I have been doing for so many years was trying to manage my sins- to lessen them, to speak them aloud, to hate them, and to fight them. And in managing my sins for so many years, instead of finding myself with my burden lightened and full of hope, I found myself with a heart continually growing heavy and my hope dying out. Managing my sin allowed for condemnation and guilt when I failed to manage them correctly. I was told in various ways that my failure to manage would separate me from God. I failed most of the time, so as one could imagine I felt I was never near God. He was always too far away from me.
Within the past four years I have experienced Jesus leading my life, lording over me. Through this I can confidently say I have become a follower of Jesus, maybe not a great one, but a follower nonetheless!
I have come to realize that the faith is not about sin management. It’s not even about our sins. It’s about who God is, who Jesus was here on earth and who He still is. It’s about following Jesus and becoming more Christ-like every day. It’s less about who He doesn’t want us to be and more about who He does want us to be.
When we are committed to intentionally work toward becoming the “little Christ” that He wants us to be, our sins will die away with our old self. Not magically, but when we intentionally work toward our goal and when we truly commit and intentionally choose to follow Jesus.
After all, if we are a follower of Jesus, we will follow Jesus right? If we are not honestly following Jesus, His examples, character, and commands, then how can we claim to be a follower of Jesus?
And if anyone has found that he or she is also caught up in sin management, ugh!, please, I beg you…stop. Get out. It’s no good. It doesn’t work. I tried it for most of my life. And I truly believe that it is a ploy from the enemy to keep us separated from our Lord and Savior.
If you want me to explain more about my personal experiences (and you are female) let me know. I will. I don’t have to be ashamed because I am not in the sin management business anymore! (If you want more information but are not privileged enough to be female, then I will refer you to a guy that trust and am certain is on the same page!)
To Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. Jude 1:24
Love,
Sandra
