The Sins That Plague Our Souls

 By Tim Challies - Posted at @challies:

It sometimes happens to all of us that our memories reach back to glimpse some sin or some blunder we committed in the past. And as that memory flashes into our minds, we cringe, we blush, we feel the shame of it wash over us again. This rarely happens with the sins we consider minor—the little ones pass quickly from our memories and are forgotten. Rather, it happens to the sins we consider major. These are the ones that plague our souls, that hurt our hearts, that keep us sleepless through the night. These are the ones that make us wonder whether we have truly been forgiven and whether we truly can be forgiven.

It always amazes me how prone I am to treat God as if he is like me, only bigger. It surprises me how often I think of God as if he is a man, only more so. As men, we see in categories of big and small—rocks that are light enough to lift and rocks that are too heavy, problems simple enough to solve and problems that are intractable, bills cheap enough to pay and bills that are beyond our means.

But we radically misunderstand the very nature of God if we think of him in such terms. ...

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