At least once a week, I do something that leads me into a downward spiral. I hurt someone else, or I disrespect someone, or I break my word, or I am just plain mean and selfish. I hate the shame that falls on me, so I immediately try my hardest to put the blame on anything but myself. Even when I stop and intentionally take ownership, my mind defaults back to looking for someone or something to assign the blame. My carnal self argues for the right to be right. These things that I do are bringing me to the point of tears. I detest the things I do – my actions and thoughts. They are things that reveal my selfishness, and thus I realize my disgust for the self inside me that fights to rule me. They are robbing me of joy. They steal my day.
Why do I continue to do them? I wish I knew. The best answer I can think of is that I am fallen, I am broken, I mess up – I rarely get things right. So what am I to do? Keep running to Christ? Take responsibility? That sounds like a good answer, although it is rather difficult when I am in one of these self-loathing, finger-pointing funks. But that is my only choice if I want to stop the enemy dead in his tracks. Release only comes when I take responsibility.
Maybe it is good. I am certainly seeing the reality and the largeness of my sin. Charles Spurgeon once said that if your sin is small, your Savior must be small. But if your sin is great, your Savior must be great also. In this moment, I know that my sin is great, and all I can do is take comfort in knowing how great, how amazing, how loving, how consistent, how full of grace my Savior is.
If I am not sinful than what is the good news, it’s just news. It is not redeeming, if I don’t need redemption. If I’m not daily realizing my deeper need for Christ than what am I doing?
