Living with the hard stuff

A very wise person I know has often told me, that everything we do in darkness will be brought into the light. I used to believe that this person told me this so that I wouldn't ever be tempted to keep secrets from them. But the older I get and closer I become in my relationship with Christ the more apparent it is to me that this indeed the case. So I took some time today talking to a good friend of mine about a rather difficult situation I have gotten myself into recently due to a series of very poor and selfish choices I've made over the last several months.
It wasn't an easy conversation but it was a necessary one I think. The reasons I felt I needed to make these selfish decisions run very deep and are much too complicated to unpack in this type of setting so I won't try. The excuses I could use to justify these decisions are as numerous as they are feeble. But as me and this friend discussed the attempt to hide these decisions can be just as costly if not more costly than the decisions themselves.
We think that if certain sins we try to keep hidden ever get uncovered that our ministry will be lessened or completely undone, sometimes that's when our real ministry actually begins. More often than not we judge ourselves based on our reputation so we start out building a good reputation for ourselves and protecting it at all cost. Which means that there are parts of our lives that we can't let anybody see, and there are some battles we have to fight alone.
Sometimes we fall into sins that we know are wrong and find gross and disgusting but yet somehow perversly fascinating, and they hook us deep, by the time we realize what is happening it is much too late and those sins are taking us places we never intended to go.
Then Saten has us doublely trapped, we have a sin we don't want anybody to know about but it is also a sin that is nearly impossible to fight on our own, so we give up and resign ourselves to the fact that we will always live in this sin and therefore be utterly useless to the message of Christ.
I hate the decisions I've made, they are by no means new decisions though, I can remember so many times screaming at God to take this sin away because I was tired and didn't want to do it anymore, knowing the grief and devestation I was causing yet not knowing how to quit. Yet God seems to remain silent. So often times I conclude that God either doesn't care or he doesn't exist. But intellectally and spiritually I KNOW that He does care and he indeed does exist.
I think we are all made for a specific and individual purpose for God but in our humaness we sometimes get in the way of that purpose and make a huge stinking mess out of our lives that only God can pull us out of.
Every time we commit a sin I think a little part of us dies, and it leaves us empty and hungry for something more, and yet I stubbornly keep committing the same sins over and over, and over again. Many times in my selfishness I forget the impact my decisions have on the people around me. Often times we think the choices we make or the sins we commit only affect us but in reality more often than not, the choices we make and the sins we commit have far reaching effects. Sometimes it takes the people you love slapping you in the face and saying "enough is enough, I love you, but I don't like you nor do I respect you right now" and that is what happened today. It's not always easy and never fun but sometimes it is what it takes for us to man-up and say I need more help than I can give myself. And you know the funny thing, is whn we admit that to ourselves and God, more often than not God is going to take that sin turn it upside down and use it for good. He's going to give you the power to conquer it then He's going to put someone in your life who is struggling with the same thing and then God is going to use you to change that person's life the same way He used somebody to change yours. So I guess my point in all this rambling is remember this, never be too ashamed of a sin to ask for help, because fortunately we serve a BIG God and nothing is to dirty or too sick for Him to use for good and worthy purposes.
Until next time, keep smilin' and may God richly bless ya.

Tucker