Failure

I am stupefied. I am appalled. I am completely taken aback at my foolishness. It’s times like these I am very glad I serve a loving and forgiving God. You know that last entry I made? Yeah, the one from a couple of days ago. I hurt someone. I said I was going to be so much more careful now… Well I did something that was so diametrically opposed to ‘careful’ that I don’t even know what to call it. It’s amazing to me. I would much rather hurt myself than someone else. Yet I’ve managed to get myself into a situation where I’m hurting someone again. Worse this time. What a horrible example I’m being of one who has God in their life. How ruthlessly I suppressed His guidance in order to put myself in this position. Although now that I know I can’t trust myself in this area, I will make sure to never, ever put myself there again.

It’s a balance, I think, to keep yourself from sin. There are two ways I know to do it. One is to cut off any possibility of it happening. Like not going to strip clubs because you know it will cause lust. But placing external limits on yourself can only be taken so far. For instance, I can’t refuse to go to work because I have vulgar co-workers who rub off on me. That takes a process of the Spirit transforming the heart. It speaks softly, and when we stop to listen, we are guided away from sin and towards God. That is what most Christians rely on a majority of the time. Because every day there are thousands of opportunities to sin. There’s just no way to avoid that. So it’s disappointing to me that I have to apply the external, top-down limit to keep myself pure in this particular matter. Out of the thousands of daily temptations to sin, I’m sure I fail in at least half of them. But it’s the ones that hurt other people that really get to me. That make me feel like a failure.