"Your sin doesn't hinder God from loving you, your sin hinders you from loving others."
-Tullian Tchividjian
"internal sense of unrest."
The following is an excerpt from a book, "Attachments":
"To relieve these symptoms, the person must return to the trauma and its corresponding “morphine.”
Fear of the unfamiliar is another way “addiction to trauma” can develop. Researchers see this when they place a rat in a “shock” box. They lock the rat in the box, then shock it, making the rat’s life in that box painfully uncomfortable. But over time, the rat becomes familiar with the situation, and pain becomes a way of life for Mr. Rat. Now the researchers open the box so the rat can escape, and what happens? You’d expect Mr. Rat to hightail it out of there, to put as much distance between himself and that box as the researchers would allow. But it didn’t happen that way at all. The rat did leave the box, but whenever it faced something unfamiliar, it returned to the box, even though returning was painful! Why? The box was a familiar place. The animal was used to its home and retreated there whenever it became anxious, no matter the cause, even when confronted by something unfamiliar."
Sinful habits are called habits because they are familiar to us. They gradually corrode our lives with all that sin yields: anger, malice, greed, lack of self-control, etc. The question is "why are these sinful yields bad for us? Which we might think is obvious, and in a sense it is obvious, but there are always more to what meets our initial views. A sunset is a bright round light illuminating over the ocean, but it's also the movement of earth in axis necessary for the universe to exist.
"Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I tell you about these things in advance — as I told you before — that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."(Galatians 5:19-21 HCSB)
Am I saved if I continue in sinful habits?
The question is one obvious aspect that focuses on external appearances alone. If I am in sinfulness (which we engage in everyday!), particularly a sinful habit or deliberate sin, and in my heart I have no desire to change and stop committing this sin then no, I'm not saved. And neither are you according to the passage above. If you keep going back to the "shock box" you're running away from the "unfamiliar." That running away could be the actual issue, not the shock box of your sins.
"In the same way faith, if it doesn’t have works, is dead by itself."
-James 2:17
But!
If I am in sinfulness, a habitual sin that I know is deliberately bad and deplorable to me, and I have the desire ...the increasing desperation to turn away from it, despite my will power, then yes I am saved. And so are you.
"...But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more"
-Romans 5:20
How do we know which one we are actually in?
Both of them appear to be the same thing:
Both see their sin, and both say they hate their sin, and both continue to do their sin.
What's the difference? Is it the difference in external attempts to change or to work harder at stopping the sin? That could be fueled by a desire to banish the feelings of guilt and shame, so that can't be the difference. Because Romans states that where sin increased grace abounded even more. In other words it is not even the sin itself that is the issue! So "fixing" your sin is not the solution, since "sin" is not the problem!
Your heart is the problem.
How do we know how we really feel then? The heart is deceptive, and cannot be trusted! How then do we know if we really want to turn away or if we just say we want to turn away when we really don't?
I breathe so deeply here, because the right response to these questions is the only true and genuine response: "I don't know how I really feel."
Say it with me: "I don't know how I really feel!"
Be genuine about where you're at:
I want to change, but I don't want to change.
I want to change but I'm not seeing any change! I want to change but I'm not sure how I can change!
I want to change, I see some change, but I'm not sure if that's real change!
I want to continue changing, but the pace is discouraging!
I don't want to change, and that feels like I want to change (?) <--if incongruent thoughts like these are coming into mind, I would suggest you talk to someone to help you organize your thoughts. That last statement does not make logical sense, but that doesn't mean you won't think it. It could be false humility, self-deprecation, or a web of lies that have you entangled in confusion.
Being honest helps mentally disable and dissemble the lies. It makes sense, the more honest you are the less deceived you are. If water is honesty and fire represents the lies blazing in our hearts, then the bigger the fire is the more water (honesty) you will need to smother it out. When the fires get smaller the visibility gets clearer.
Being honest is crucial to approaching God.
From my experience in habitual sins, which I don't feel comfortable sharing in explicit detail, for obvious reasons, I have seen with my own eyes the ways I have begun to love others more.
I repeat, from my experience in sins that I committed habitually and knowingly (meaning I was fully aware of how much it went against my belief in God) I have witnessed that the change came first in my increasing empathy and love for others.
I was becoming less and less an island into myself.
The sins had not disappeared (I was still committing them with self-contempt and confusion), nor were they being felt as "justified" by my newfound connection to others' pain, but I was changing in a radical way. God was changing me, just not in the way I had imagined was the "right way."
I was actually hearing people speak and understanding, even feeling, what they said. And then each night I began to feel more and more disgusted by my sins that I still had difficulty stopping.
This time persisted for a while. I was changing, but my improvements were in other places.
At rare times, I even "lost myself" to people. Meaning, I became more like a parent than a child. Something like love without expectations.
I sought to empower them. I sought to understand what might be causing them to be the way they were. I wanted ....to help them.
I tasted love of others
more than love from others.
And it was strangely euphoric.
Loving others is who we are as humans created by God for His will. God has been growing me to be a kingdom dweller through the development of love for others.
The kingdom of Heaven, God's kingdom, is equivalent to our attitude of submission to His will. In the end we cannot enter heaven if we are not a soul that submits to His will, because in God's kingdom He reigns. Similar to kingdoms in our fairy tales, if someone goes against the King's edict they are punished by treason, resulting in their banishment or death. Why? Because the King's edict governs the King's kingdom. Likewise, the kingdom of heaven will be unlike those in our fairytales in that our Heavenly King will be perfect in goodness through and through, and not only will He be a good and righteous King, He will also be our Abba Father.
Maybe that submission comes quickly for some and slowly for others (like me). But regardless of how we begin to submit to God's rule over our lives through our decisions anchored in His desires over our natural inclinations, the more we are being shaped into kingdom folk. Being shaped by God is almost never what we imagine it to go like. The only proof we have is what we are given In the Word of God.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." -Galatians 5:22-24
But again, the first step before all of this putting the fires out with the help of the Holy Spirit, so that we can be honest.
Recognizing that you don't know.
You can only be as real as your reality is.
I'm not asking about your progress or your attempts. I'm asking about where you're at right now. Are you good, then rejoice! God is blessing you with His goodness! Are you not good? Are you confused? Overwhelmed? Tired?
Be there. Be wherever it's the truth, and if that is the truth, if that scary or empty place is the truth of where you are, then God is also in that, because He is only in truth. He can help you. He can help me, and that makes going into the truth less scary. Relationship with God makes the unfamiliar less threatening.
Jmegrey
--short eschatological interjection here--
Heaven will be enjoyable and joyful because we will see the truth of God's will as good--not self-diminishing. God, by definition, cannot sin, and therefore He cannot choose anything but perfect goodness. We know this, but we may not trust in this right now. We have no hope in choosing good without being grafted into Christ's righteousness, because apart from Christ there is no good. When we are "grafted in" we mold to Him. We are a self, being shaped-- through access in Christ --by the Holy Spirit. We can come into Christ and know Him and who He is (and see who we truly are, our identity) because He became one of us, or of our substance: human. Then at His coming we are glorified with new bodies that contain our "shaped" souls in which we can enter the kingdom of God with. Lots of questions of this area, but what I am understanding up to here has made sense to me in a convincing and empowering way, both to love God more and others more.
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