If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.-1 John 1:9

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”- Isaiah 43:25

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.-Psalm 51:10

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit –Matthew 28:19.

After the Fact

I’m calling on you, Lord
Albeit, after the fact.
Because I’ve lost my mind
And it may never come back.

It seems my heart and my mind
Have lost touch with my soul.
And something’s quite wrong
Because my thinking’s not whole.

Is this a crisis of conscience?
Or perhaps a spiritual phase?
And if I’ve ruined my mind,
Can my soul still be saved?

If I’ve offended so badly
That I cannot be fixed
Will I then be condemned
To a trip down the Styx?

I will give first fruits of sorrow,
I’ll fall to my knees and repent
In return all I ask
Please accept my lament

I will seek your kingdom first,
Asking for only your love,
But please banish these demons
I’ve become so afraid of.

I’m truly sorry my Lord,
And yes, I’m afraid
But that’s not the reason
I regret the choice that I made.

I realize now that my actions
Have been insulting to you.
By disrespecting this life
Which by grace you made new.

Still, I beseech you, my Lord
Albeit, after the fact,
Will you make my mind whole?
And bring my sanity back?
© Linda Troxell 11/16/2017

Have you ever been in this situation? You have done something so egregious, something so stupid, so blatantly irresponsible that you can’t imagine why God would forgive you for it. And that, then, leads to such anxiety you can’t imagine ever being anxiety free again. Then you begin to think it through and remember who God is. With that, you realize that God forgives us anything if we truly repent if we are genuinely sorry. And boy, are you sorry. Maybe you remember that the Bible tells us: “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”- Isaiah 43:25. So the anxiety begins to fade and you can breathe a bit better. But then you realize that even if God forgives you that doesn’t mean He’s going to save you from the natural consequences of this behavior. In fact, you’re sure He won’t. That’s really how we learn, after all, through the natural consequences of our behavior. So, then, there you are right back where you started. You can’t breathe and anxiety is tearing at you.

Well, I have a friend, (wink, wink, it’s always a friend right?) No, this time it really is a friend. Not that it couldn’t have been me, but not this time. Anyway, this friend did something spectacularly stupid and incredibly irresponsible. Something that endangered his very sanity. He took a massive dose of some hallucinogen or another. I describe it that way because one of the most stupid things about taking illicit drugs is that you never know what you’re ingesting. There are reliable studies showing that very often drugs sold on the street contain very little of the ingredient for which they are being bought. Sometimes what you buy actually contains none of the drug you are told you are buying. In any case, my friend not only took the risk of taking this unknown drug, he took a massive dose of whatever it was.

Two days later he was still not in his right mind. He was, however, lucid enough to be really scared. And he had reason to be. He was still hallucinating mildly, he was very paranoid, his vision was distorted and his short-term memory was nearly nonexistent. And his ability to process information was still extremely impaired. He was being plagued by thoughts that what he did was not something God could forgive. He was stuck in a loop that went like this, “Can God forgive what I’ve done?… God cannot ever forgive what I’ve done.” and becoming more and more anxious with each cycle. So, I deliberately guided him to the thought that God forgives anything if you are truly sorry. I did not, however, lead him through the rest of the process, i.e. are you really sorry? That would have to wait a few days until I felt he could finally handle the truth and reality.

It took more than a week for my friend to return to normal. Believe me, those were very anxious days for him. Each morning when he woke up he had to face the fact that his mind was not yet whole, and that it might never be. And he obsessed quite a bit about being forgiven. He was having a difficult time refraining from thinking that he had not come back to normal mentally because God, who had not forgiven him, was, in fact, punishing him. I kept reiterating that God forgives all if you ask for forgiveness. I showed him some scripture that reinforced that idea as well, for example, 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And I waited until we could have a really honest discussion.

Finally, after about 10 days, his thinking was rational enough and I saw the opening to have the discussion I was waiting for. He was reminiscing about his experience and he said that he couldn’t believe he had been having such a hard time understanding that God always forgives. So I took that opportunity to go a bit deeper with him about that thought. I reminded him that although God will always forgive us, there are two conditions to receiving His forgiveness; we must be truly sorry and we must forgive others. I asked him if he met those two conditions. Of course, he was quick to say yes. But I wasn’t so sure he did. So I continued the conversation to help him discern his level of repentance in this situation.

You see I wondered if he was actually sorry he had taken those drugs or whether he was only sorry that they had affected him so badly. I think this is a common dilemma we all tend to have when we are looking for forgiveness. Think about how many times you have been sorry for something that turned out badly that, if you’re being honest, but for the negative consequences, you would have never thought about again. I can think of a thousand things over my life; from being sorry I was speeding when I got a traffic ticket, to being sorry I was gossiping about a friend in a text when I realized it was a group text in which the friend was included. Some of the things are in the very distant past because, thanks to God, I have grown. But some are in the not very distant past because I am still human. You may wonder how I determine if I am truly sorry for a behavior or only sorry for its consequence. One of the ways I can tell the difference is whether or not I have stopped the behavior in question. When we are really sorry about our behavior we stop doing that behavior; or at least it slows down significantly; we are still human, so we will always sin.

But what happens when we tell God we are sorry for something and ask for his forgiveness when we are not really sorry? Don’t worry about compounding your sin by fooling God into believing you were sorry about your behavior when, in fact, you were only sorry you got caught. Because you can’t fool God. The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel that He doesn’t take us at our word or even judge by our behavior. No, God reads our hearts. But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”1 Samuel 16:7. God knows far better than we do what we are and are not sorry for. Likewise, He knows about sins of which we are unaware

Sins of which we are unaware come in two categories. The first are behaviors which we are unaware are sinful. We probably get a pass on these sins, at least for a while. After all, why would God hold us accountable for behaviors we aren’t aware are sinful. However, l am sure that these kinds of sins are sufficiently rare that we need not be concerned with them here. More likely are the unrepentant sins which we have chosen to forget or those we have buried deep in our unconscious. Sins of which we are unaware in our day to day lives. These are usually things like resentment, anger, pride, greed and envy. Unlike the behaviors we might not know are sins, these sins we are fully responsible for.

So how can we repent of sins if we are unaware of their existence? Well, some will advise that we say a generic prayer to cover all unresolved sin. Something like, “Father if I have hidden sins I ask that you forgive me for all of them.” Personally, I don’t think we can get away with a blanket plea for forgiveness. I mean, the Bible clearly tells us that our repentance must be real, we must be genuinely sorry for the behavior for which we are asking forgiveness and turn away from it. How can we be truly sorry or turn away from a behavior of which we are unaware? No, I don’t think that will satisfy God.

So what then is the alternative? I’m not an expert but I can share what I do. I pray every day asking God to show me the sins of which I am unaware, have forgotten or buried. I begin with this scripture: create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.-Psalm 51:10. And I go on to tell God that I sincerely want to increase my intimacy with Him and I know I cannot do that when I have unrepentant sin. And as God shows me those sins, I repent and ask for forgiveness. But I must warn you that if you are going to borrow this method, you better be ready for what it reveals. In my experience, God has taken me at my word and has put me in mind of many, many forgotten sins as well as revealing to me things I had not even thought of as sinful.

For example, I had never thought of myself as a particularly prideful person. Not to say I had no pride, again, I’m human I have the full array of sin. But I had never thought it was a particular problem of mine say on the level with impatience or intolerance. But through this prayer activity, God has shown me aspects of my behavior which I had been unaware were even prideful. Two that come to mine are perfectionism and extreme discomfort in asking for or accepting help from others. I was never aware that these behaviors were aspects of the sin of pride and in fact had thought them to be strengths. So, be prepared if you chose to use this prayer. And if you don’t I urge you to find another way to become aware of your forgotten or hidden sin because until you are aware of them you can’t be forgiven for them.

Ferreting out unresolved sin should be on the top of every Christian’s to do list for several reasons. Among them, in order to increase our intimacy with God. I consider intimacy with our maker to be one of the most important parts of the Christian walk. And our intimacy with God seems to have an inverse relationship with our efforts to repent of our sin. Therefore we cannot gain intimacy with God unless we are working on decreasing the sin in our lives. In addition to increased intimacy with God, decreasing the sin in our life is necessary if we want to fulfill the most important assignment we have been given as Christians, the Great Commission.

The Great Commission is our assignment to share our Christianity in a way which brings others to Christ. You can find the Great Commission in the Bible at the end of the book of Matthew, in chapter 28. The Risen Jesus sends his disciples out to bring all nations to Christ, to baptize them and teach them to observe His commands. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”-Matthew 28:19-20.

Arguably, the most important thing we can do as Christians is to go out and bring others to Christ. Now, if you’re anything like me the first thing you think of is that wild-eyed guy walking up and down the street screaming for us all to repent for the end of the world is at hand. Or perhaps you picture what used to be called Bible thumpers when I was growing up. Those rather obnoxious Christians who will not allow any conversation to go forward without trying to share his or her religion.

But I don’t think that is what is being asked of us in the Great Commission. No, I think that the best way to bring others to Christ is through attraction rather than promotion. We can exhort Christianity until we have no more breath and most likely we will turn more people away than we will recruit. Only by showing people what it really means to be a Christian, the peace, love, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, support of one another and more that we share, will we make them want to join us so they can have what we have. But we will not have these things to show them unless we continue to resolve our own sin. So let’s dare to ask God to show us our sin and then ask Him to help us to resolve it so we can all be the genuine Christians the world so badly needs.

Points for Prayer and Pondering

Have you ever done something you were afraid God would not forgive you for? If you have, how did you deal with that situation?

Do you think it is important to have your hidden sins revealed to you? What, if anything, have you done to have them revealed?

What do you think about the Great Commission? Do you believe we, as Christians, are responsible to lead others to Christ? If so, have you made an effort to do so?