I was reading 1John 2 and read these verses as I have a billion times in the past...


I thought to myself, "Well, I'm pretty safe...

It always makes me shake my head when someone tells me they feel one of my gifts from God is a giving heart. How little they know of this heart which is thoroughly saturated with selfishness because of my great love for myself. The thing about true selfishness is that it hides from the selfish person and those around that person. I'm not narcissistic which some people confuse as just being a selfish person because they can see the selfishness. Narcissistic people can rarely give anything of themselves...

My sin has not only pained me spiritually but its effects carried over to my mental health. I lost a good friend because of my sin. Losing friends is a great loss for me as I do not readily make close friends. My despair was and still is at times unbearable on my own. But my greatest despair for my spiritual welfare was/is beyond what I could manage. I've been reading Piper's book When the Darkness Will Not Lift. It has be a source of strength for me. In it he quotes John Bunyan:

...

I see distant fog drunk by the sun.
The ground is left dry yet cracks a smile.

I lose time on time.
The past laughs in a cage.

I fight the wind which bends my back.
The clouds roar with delight.

While waiting...

I moan and life smiles on.

Hard times are just part of what God has in store for us. Many times those hard times are brought on by our own sin. Our sin can trip us so thoroughly that we fall and wallow in it. What does God mean by allowing these occurrences of sin? I think it is because we refuse to look at our sins head on. Who wants to, right? Especially those "big" sins that you want to bury and never reveal, but which do simmer inside. God allows us to fall and wallow in it to show us that it is a real sin that...