I received a phone call from a man who had moved to another state. When he lived here, I had the privilege of leading him to the Lord, baptizing him, and watching him grow spiritually. I hadn’t heard from him in over a year so I was a little surprised when I learned he was on the phone. More so when he opened with “Randy, I’m in trouble”.
He recounted the story: meeting a young woman at work, getting to know her over a few months, meeting her for coffee, then lunch, exchanging admissions of attraction, and finally a “discreet” meeting one afternoon at a hotel in a nearby town. He closed his story with “It’s been going on for months now, and I don’t know what to do. Her husband found out, and it’s only a matter of time until someone tells my wife.”
In the discussion that followed I asked what resources he had where he lived. I knew he had begun attending another church when he first moved there, so I asked whether he had contacted the minister of that church. He responded, “I stopped going to church there when I started the affair. It just didn’t feel right”. I bet it didn’t.
In previous posts I’ve shared some of the “problems” I see people encounter as they try to worship God in a meaningful way. One of the most ironic—and common—problems we deal with is the feeling that it just doesn’t feel right because of sin in our life.
If someone comes before the Lord with the body of Christ to worship him, but is nurturing sin in his life, it shouldn’t feel right. We are deceiving ourselves and trying to deceive God. The discomfort of this makes us want to hide from him as Adam hid from God after the first sin. But this is exactly the opposite of what we need to do. When we run from God we also run from the only one who can forgive us and cleanse us from the dirt we wallow in as we sin.
Our sin is not news to God. In fact, that feeling that it “just doesn’t feel right” is usually the conviction of the Holy Spirit that it isn’t right. When we feel this, it is a signal that we need to repent, to confess our sin before the Lord and to seek his forgiveness—even his help in avoiding that sin in the future. The problem with worship is that it can function as a mirror reflecting our sin. But it is also one of its greatest blessings.
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