The word draws up images for all of us.
Vomit.
We each have our ‘war stories’ with this repugnant occurrence. My most recent was last winter:
---A neighbor’s adult size teenage son
---A carpool to school
---A sudden stomach illness.
---My van, front seat…stench, vomit, frozen chunks
---Cold winter temps prohibiting open windows.
(To his defense, of course, he couldn’t help it; this didn’t, however, make the wretching experience [that I witnessed] nor the wretched remains [that I cleaned up] any less…well, wretched.)
Couple those impressions (and your own) with the following statement:
Confession of our sin, both to God and to any involved in its commission, is a kind of revolting, uncomfortable, purging experience with benefit, not only on a level of removing our guilt & restoring communion with God, but also in reinforcing to our minds and soul of the odious, offensive reality of sin.
Simply, sin is putrid. Disgusting. Like Vomit..
Do we see our sin as such?
Do I bear my sin in confession to God with awareness of its great cost (Calvary), its great consequences (death, disgrace to God’s name), its toll to others (pain, betrayal, a stumblingblock)?
Do I look at it as the repulsive, revolting offense that it is?
Confession (consistently, sincerely, ardently practiced) helps to remind .
For just as the thing that causes vomiting is never looked on the same again, it can never be embraced in fondness, enjoyed in pleasure because of the memories that remain, so a faithful investigation of our hearts to identify & confess any sin should operate the same way. The heartfelt confession of our sins should leave a bitter taste that is not soon forgotten.
Sin may be (sometimes) sweet in its commission; but may God give us sensitive, tender, confessing hearts that heave with its affront against God.
Leaving us to rejoice in the grace that pristinely cleans it away (I John 1:9).
Vomit.
We each have our ‘war stories’ with this repugnant occurrence. My most recent was last winter:
---A neighbor’s adult size teenage son
---A carpool to school
---A sudden stomach illness.
---My van, front seat…stench, vomit, frozen chunks
---Cold winter temps prohibiting open windows.
(To his defense, of course, he couldn’t help it; this didn’t, however, make the wretching experience [that I witnessed] nor the wretched remains [that I cleaned up] any less…well, wretched.)
Couple those impressions (and your own) with the following statement:
“Confession is an act of mortification, it is as it were the vomit
of the soul; it breeds a dislike of the sweetest morsels when they are cast up in loathsome ejections; sin is sweet in commission, but bitter in remembrance.”
(Thomas Manton, Puritan writer, 1625)
Confession of our sin, both to God and to any involved in its commission, is a kind of revolting, uncomfortable, purging experience with benefit, not only on a level of removing our guilt & restoring communion with God, but also in reinforcing to our minds and soul of the odious, offensive reality of sin.
Simply, sin is putrid. Disgusting. Like Vomit..
Do we see our sin as such?
Do I bear my sin in confession to God with awareness of its great cost (Calvary), its great consequences (death, disgrace to God’s name), its toll to others (pain, betrayal, a stumblingblock)?
Do I look at it as the repulsive, revolting offense that it is?
Confession (consistently, sincerely, ardently practiced) helps to remind .
For just as the thing that causes vomiting is never looked on the same again, it can never be embraced in fondness, enjoyed in pleasure because of the memories that remain, so a faithful investigation of our hearts to identify & confess any sin should operate the same way. The heartfelt confession of our sins should leave a bitter taste that is not soon forgotten.
Sin may be (sometimes) sweet in its commission; but may God give us sensitive, tender, confessing hearts that heave with its affront against God.
Leaving us to rejoice in the grace that pristinely cleans it away (I John 1:9).
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