'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

I don't know why I even keep a blog. I rarely update, and even when I do, I doubt more than 2 people read it -_-;

Well, anyway, I need to leave in twenty minutes, so I better write what I want to write. Today's topic is sin. -_-

I'm hoping it's not just me when I say... whenever I confess a sin, repent, and/or make a resolution to change, improve, or otherwise engage in a certain activity (e.g. regular devotional time, etc), I realize it becomes hard even to continue what little "good" I had going up to that point. That is to say, when I want to go one step forward, I end up taking two steps backward.

I find myself changing my definition of "sin". I give myself excuses: "oh, that little thing.. that's not sin. It's just bad habit."

Little things... wasting time, not being loving, being curt (I seem to do that a lot), ignoring God when I do things that I deem are unrelated to "spirituality" or serving God...

Really little things. I don't think it's the action in itself that makes tiny habits "sins", but my attitude behind. Everyone does this, or has done it at least once, I'm sure: snoozing the alarm for half an hour. It's not a sin to snooze. Of that, I'm pretty sure. But it has become a sin for me. I'm not going to spill out the sins of my heart, but I have been convicted by God to repent that sin. As soon as I realized that my heart was sinning against God whenever I snoozed that alarm clock, the next day, I snoozed it for 2 hours and missed two conferences (mandatory). And I told myself, "it's not a SIN to miss class..."

Today in class we talked about Psalm 32 and Genesis 3. What do these have in common? David's reaction to his own sin being revealed, and Adam and Eve's reaction to their nakedness (their sin revealed) were the same. It was a reaction of fear, because they knew they had sinned against a Holy God.

I have become so calloused to my own sin that I don't even call it sin, I just try to "improve" my actions. I have lost fear of sinning against God, of being in the presence of God, praising and worshipping Him with my mouth while in my heart I hide unconfessed, ugly sins.

And yet, there's another side to this. What "big" sins I do confess and repent of, I hold guilt. My own actions and attitudes show that I don't fully believe that I have been forgiven, because I find myself trying to earn forgiveness. Either by doing some good that I feel is "worthy" enough to earn forgiveness, or by punishing myself in whatever way I find fitting.

The Professor gave us an assignment to first, call it SIN, second, call it FORGIVEN, and third, call on to God to help us repent (to change our attitudes, our minds).

I fear that.. I have lost holy fear. And like the hymn goes..

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
the hour I first believed

Praise be to the LORD