1 John 1:8

Most Christians perform such high-level gymnastics with their sin they could make the USA Olympic team! Seriously, we often take our sin and down-grade it to an “accident” or a “mistake.” At other times we just plain ignore our sin altogether. When we are finally willing to acknowledge our sin, we still tend to minimize it. Usually there is also a certain amount of blame-shifting that happens. “I only did what I did because so and so did this to me first.” There is a real spiritual danger to all this. When we don’t deal rightly with our sin our hearts begin to harden toward God and others! We lose sensitivity to our close fellowship with God and just go through the motions of the Christian life. And we become desensitized to how our sin impacts the people around us, leaving a trail of carnage in our wake. The goal is to develop a tender conscience with our sin, not a hard heart!

PASSAGE: 1 John 1:8 - "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."

PAUSE: Whatever happened to the word “sin”? We deceive ourselves when we say that we have not sinned. Even though our culture is uncomfortable with the word sin. We need to recognize I and call it what it is. Jesus’s best friend John was clear: we deceive ourselves greatly when we fail to call sin, sin!

PRAYER: Father, forgive me for failing to acknowledge my sin. Help me be honest, acknowledge my sin when I sin, and then confess it to you.