27 November 2015

For the next while, I'll be posting through a series of passages given to me, which I'm calling "Struggling with Sin."

Prayer

1. Confession

Scripture:

• Psalm 51

Observations:

In this passage. we see David coming forward to God after the Bathsheba incident. His first response is to plead with God for mercy, acknowledging his sin. In verse 3, he writes " For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me," a verse and sentiment I can definitely understand, especially when I first read it on Tuesday.

After acknowledging his sin, he also acknowledges that God delights in a pure heart and right spirit and asks to be cleansed, that he may once again be in a right standing with God.

If I could sum up the key elements of this passage, they would be:

1. God, I recognise that I have sinned
2. I recognise that you delight in perfection
3. Cleanse me and remove my sin
4. Turn your face towards me once again
5. Allow me to praise you before others for what you have done

Application:

The elements given here are definitely different from what I've been doing. I've strayed so far from my confession of sin. In recent years, my confession has sounded something like this:

"Okay God, I screwed up again. Give me the strength so I can stop screwing up.

And in recent months/weeks, something more like this:

"Not again, God. Please give me your strength to push through. (not that it'll do anything.)"

Absolutely gone is any sign of contrition or brokenness. My challenge to myself is to incorporate the elements above into my process of registering my sin. Recognising my sin, recognising God's standard, asking for restoration, asking for communion with God again, and praising him in thanks.

Prayer:

Lord, you know my struggles. My past history with pornography and lust, my ways of ogling women and trying to get glances of things I shouldn't. You know my habitual "boob check", built up over 11 years. These are things which need to be gone from my life. I recognise that these things are all not of you. What you gave is intimacy with my wife and I haven't taken the time to really build that, instead turning my attentions to everything around me, leaving her abandoned an alone. I have clung to the lie I've believed since I was 13 instead of clinging to the blessing you have given me. 

Remove my sin from me, Lord, that I can pour into my wife, building her up. Help me to be completely satisfied in her, breaking my need for external validation and appreciation, finding it instead in you and in her. Cleanse my mind from the ghosts of pornography which haunt me. Break my habits of ogling women and remove from me the desire to do so. Build my foundation on you, clinging to you. Don't allow me to substitute my wife for all of these addictions and issues, because that will not solve anything, but help me to replace them with you, growing in you and being filled with your presence, that I would be able to love her genuinely, with your love.

I want to feel your presence again in my life. Break the callouses around my heart that I've built up for various reasons, keeping me from genuinely feeling, prompting me to chase after fleeting, shallow thrills instead of going deep.

I thank you for the restoration you give and for the faith you've built in me. Thank you for a wife who's committed to you and is seeking your glory over her own sense of justice. Thank you for pastors who are pointing me in directions that will hopefully help me to recover, and thank you for preparing my heart to receive your word, allowing me to face my sins and work to overcome them. I ask that you would pull me through and that my life would be a testament to others going through similar struggles.

Help me, Lord, because I need you.

Amen