Christians are supposed to have it all together. With the Holy Spirit making us more and more like our savior, our call to “Be holy as God is holy” should be attainable. Yet the closer we get to God, the more we see how willfully we sin and how incapable we are of being holy. We see our weaknesses and feel like absolute failures. But we’re wrong.
Fake it till you make it
In a social-media culture, we are encouraged to portray a life we want others to think we have. When interviewed, teenagers and adults admit to having anxiety and depression from the stress of trying to display a certain lifestyle on social media and feeling like failures because they see everyone else really living a life of happiness, adventure, and success. They become wrapped up in maintaining their public identity at the expense of actually living their lives.
Are we any different with our spiritual lives? We so desperately want to be a beacon of holiness, displaying a victorious life to everyone around us. No one else seems to struggle with sin, so why do we feel like we sin as often as we take a breath?
We feel like failures because the perfection others show isn’t the life we experience. So we try to blend in and act like our sin isn’t choking out our joy and love for God. We spend so much time trying to hide our sin from others that we never see victory over it.
If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us… If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8, 10)
Our wicked hearts are deceitful and the allure of sin is ever-present in our lives. If we ignore how much we love sin, we risk minimizing its dreadful impact. We replace our need for God with the belief that we can stop sinning if we just make ourselves strong enough.
Don’t confuse weakness with failure
With every decision, we make one of two choices: we pursue God or we pursue sin. Temptation does nothing more than asking the clarifying question of “Will you follow your desires, or what God desires for you?”
Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness? (Romans 6:16)
We so often get discouraged because we feel like we shouldn’t be tempted so often. We grow exhausted from trying to hide how often we’re tempted to love something other than Christ. Yet it’s not our temptation that’s our problem, but how we respond to it. Temptation reminds us of just how much we need Christ.
Recognizing weakness to God’s glory
Consider the areas of your life that you struggle with. Lust? Anger? Jealousy? Judging others? Pride? When the desire to give in to those comes up, we often beg God to remove the temptation from our lives. We want to love Him more, but our desires want to pull us away.
But he said to me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So then, I will boast most gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may reside in me. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
God’s ways are often the opposite of what we’d expect (Isaiah 55:8-9). We often think God wants us to be strong enough to deal with anything the world throws at us. We assume He makes us the ones whose strength matters.
Yet we see that we don’t need our strength. We need to recognize how infinitely weak we are. We need to see our utter inability to please God on our own. What we truly need, in every situation, is Christ.
Yet our weakness and desire to sin isn’t a need for shame. Rather, God fully expects it. God uses our weakness for His glory!
We can never be strong enough to resist sin on our own, but we do need to be wise. We need to understand our desire to sin exists and that Christ is our only way of truly overcoming it. It’s critical that we be honest with ourselves, other believers, and God when it comes to our struggles.
Denying our love of sin lessens our ability to love Christ more. By knowing just how often our hearts lead us astray, we are able to see just how much we need to cling to Christ. Bible reading, prayer, being in community with believers, and removing those things that tempt us are all steps we can take to not only let God fill the gaps of our
Accepting that we don’t need to be perfect is a freeing truth. We no longer hold ourselves to standard only Christ could maintain. Instead, we remember we have a savior that we run to whenever we need Him. The more we learn about Christ, and the more we learn the truth about ourselves, the more realize that we must run to Him every moment of our lives.
My flesh and my heart may grow weak,
but God always protects my heart and gives me stability.
Yes, look!
you destroy everyone who is unfaithful to you.
But as for me, God’s presence is all I need.
I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter,
as I declare all the things you have done. (Psalm 73:26-28)
