Acutely Aware of my Own Sin

There are times in life where I am very acutely aware of my own sin. The last three days have been of those times. Yes, I know I'm a sinner, yes, I know God is forgiving no matter how far we stray from Him. But there always seem to be those times when I feel even more aware than normal of just what a wretched person I am.

John spoke in his sermon this morning about a former RUF student at Belhaven when he was an intern who said that he had a view of God as a judge with a clipboard containing a checklist of every sin he had committed, who was staring at him as if to ask, "How are you going to fix this?" That is sometimes how I feel, but it goes beyond just God (as if God's being that way wouldn't be bad enough). I feel like people are that way too, holding up a clipboard to my actions and listing everything I've done when they're around as "good" or "bad", but of course it takes 100 instances of something nice and good to cancel out just one little screwup in their minds.

Now, I know that isn't true, both of God and of others. But there are times when I find it difficult to transfer that factual knowledge to being real knowledge. It's a view of God and a view of others that I hate, yet I am unable of getting away from it. And it's one of the worst feelings ever when you know you screw up because you thing that fixing the problem is going to be an impossible task.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1, ESV)

Luke