How to Deal With Your Own Sin | Night of Worship Preview
By Chris Denning
If you missed this last weekend at Journey, you missed the perfect start to our new series, Making Sense of Sin. Our heart with this series isn’t just about making us come face to face with our sin, but rather understanding what it is, what it does to our lives, and the freedom we can experience from it through Jesus.
However, as we were planning this series, we felt that we wanted to provide some practical help and tools to help us deal with our sin. When I say “deal with our sin,” I don’t mean provide a solution for it or even how to save yourself from it; that’s what Jesus has done for us.
Instead, when I say “dealing with sin,” you should think PROCESSING your sin. How can we process our own sin so that we can move forward?
A lot of times, we can downplay or minimize how our sin is affecting us, and we never really process it appropriately. This is like hurting yourself and ending up with an open wound, but you never tend to it or care for it. Not only will this open wound not heal, but you will ONLY GET WORSE!
That’s why we have to practically learn how to deal with our sin. And this isn’t about legalism or finding a way we can take care of our sin ourselves. Again, that is what Jesus has ALREADY done for us.
Ok. Now that we’re on the same page, what does it look like to process our sin? Well, this Friday night, we’re hosting a Night of Worship at Journey where we’ll be walking through 4 steps that we can use to process our own sin.
Keep in mind, there is no absolute recipe for processing your sin, but we boiled it down to 4 steps you can walk through in dealing with your sin:
1. CONFESSION
Confession is the first step to dealing with your sin. We see time and time again that we’re called to confess our sins to God and in Biblical community (James 5:16, 1 John 1:9).
It’s important to understand that confession isn’t about embarrassing ourselves and letting everyone in on our business. Confessing your sins takes the weight of sin from your shoulders and allows you to be fully honest. Confession is where we start because you can’t address something you haven’t acknowledged.
2. REPENTANCE
Repent, the root of repentance, literally means, “to feel such sorrow for sin or fault as to be disposed to change one’s life for the better.” Repentance isn’t just feeling bad about your sin; repentance is about seeing your sin for what it is and making changes in your life to get as far away from it as possible.
*Repentance is not easy. At ALL.* It takes honest introspection and the power of the Holy Spirit to change your heart. Sin is incredibly strong, and though you may feel bad about what you’ve done, you will not change until you truly repent of your sin.
3. COMMUNION
After turning from your sin, you have to turn to God. That’s what communion is. Communion is spending time with God, reminding yourself of His truth and what He wants for you.
When I think of communion with God, I think of intentional time spent with Him. That’s prayer. That’s reading your Bible. That’s worshipping Him. Communion comes after confession and repentance, because He is where we can ALWAYS turn to when we sin.
4. RECONCILIATION
The final step is reconciliation, which means that you are brought close in a relationship with Him again. Sin takes us far, far away from God. Even small things, because God HATES sin. God can’t even be close to sin. That’s why our sin drives us further away from him.
Reconciliation is the last step we take because only when we confess our sin, repent, and commune with God can we be reconciled with the Father again. God’s goal is ALWAYS reconciliation, so we can take comfort knowing that NO sin takes us too far from God.
I want to encourage you to mark your calendars for THIS FRIDAY NIGHT, October 23 at 7pm to join us at Journey Church for the Night of Worship. We’ve got a guest band coming in, and we’re planning a great time for you to learn how to process your own sin through prayer, worship, and communion.
Trust me, you’re NOT going to want to miss this AWESOME NIGHT!
We hope to see you there!!!