Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Feeling guilty?

At Faithfit today we were talking about our goals for health and fitness, and we talked about our varying struggles with guilt when we fail to meet those goals. At the prayer meeting on Sunday night, we were talking about the need generally for more conviction of sin in order to see more fruitfulness in the church. As I've been thinking about it, it seems to me that there's a lot of guilt around, but not much true conviction. It got me reading up on what conviction really is and how we should deal with it biblically.

Guilt is a common emotion we all experience (Christian or not) when we do something wrong we are ashamed of. But conviction is something only the Holy Spirit can work (see John 16:8). Conviction is seeing God's holiness and feeling an utter dread of sin when we see how it offends God. The devil wants us at this point to feel paralysed in condemnation, but the Holy Spirit uses our conviction to drive us to the cross of Jesus. Our conviction helps us to value the cross as we should, because it is through the cross that Jesus took on the wrath of God upon sin so that we wouldn't have to experience it ourselves, if we are trusting in Him. Our conviction also helps us correctly to view God, and not view Him simply as a kind Friend. He is our Friend, but He is also awesome in His majesty and perfection. We need that sense of awe too.

Conviction of sin is necessary for someone to come to true faith in Jesus, but it doesn't stop at a one-time conversion experience. Conviction is continuous in our lives as long as we are living on earth, because we still sin. Our sin is paid for at the cross, full stop, but as part of our sanctification, God is making us to be more like Jesus every day, and conviction is an integral part of that process.

Nancy Leigh deMoss teaches on brokenness, and she explains it as a lifestyle of responding in humility and obedience to the conviction of God's Spirit and His Word. True conviction means there's no more blame on anyone else, no more ifs or buts, no comparison game, but just broken humility like the tax collector: ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ (Luke 18:13) I definitely find it easier to be the Pharisee in this story! He's the one who compares himself to everyone else and finds himself to be in the right before God, but he fails to see his own self-righteousness. He's so busy being religious and fasting and giving money that he's neglected to search his own heart.

It can be tempting, growing up in a Christian home or a 'respectable' family, to view sin as something that somebody else does. To view sin as the big mess-ups, like stealing or cheating or drug addiction or adultery. Nancy's list of 'respectable sins' really convicts me: wasting time, self protection, talking too much, eating or drinking too much, having a sharp tongue or a critical spirit, overspending, fear, worry, selfish motives and complaining. Some of the goals we've been making at Faithfit aren't really to do with sinning - like my goal to drink more water! But some of our goals are to do with character traits we want to build to be more like Jesus, such as self control. While I don't think we should use our goals as a legalistic measuring standard of how well we're doing before God, perhaps there is room for us to reflect on whether the barriers to us meeting our goals could be sinful patterns of behaviour in our lives, or even idolatry.

So let's keep it up, ladies, because our motive is to glorify Him! And when we do fail, let's take a moment to see if this is something we should feel convicted about - in which case we need to take it to the cross, confess it to the Lord and to each other, then move on in freedom.

'Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper,
but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.' Proverbs 28:13