psalms on Sin Avoidance

Pastor: Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we gather on this Thursday of Holy Week, let us humbly draw near to the Lord to remember what He has done and to receive what He gives to us by His Word an...

Pastor: Let us then confess our sins to God our Father. People: Merciful God, we confess that too often we have failed to put on the armor You provide.  We try to protect ourselves with th...

I grew up in church. However, this church was part of a denomination that avoided mentioning the Holy Spirit whenever possible. Our denominational leaders treated Him a bit like the crazy uncle who sh...

I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do these things there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be carefu...

If I am in denial about my own weaknesses and sin, there will be a concomitant blindness to the greatness and glory of God.

In his 2008 book, Just Courage, Gary Haugen, a lawyer by training, describes an interesting legal precedent known as “void for vaugeness.” Haugen used the precedent to illustrate how vague ideas of Bi...

In his book “Where Is God When It Hurts?”, author Philip Yancey shares an unfortunate, yet central dynamic related to how Americans respond to pain: we do everything possible to avoid it. That means p...

The clergyman cannot minimize sin and maintain his proper role in our culture’. For sin is ‘an implicitly aggressive quality – a ruthlessness, a hurting, a breaking away from God and from the rest of ...

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

A man who worked at an aviary in a bird park went to an outdoor wedding. He kept looking up until a friend finally asked him why. The man replied, “Sorry, I’m used to looking up to avoid falling bird ...

A Christian counselor once commented on people hiding from God. “Think about it. The very first people in the history of the world, Adam and Eve, hid from God when they realized their nakedness after ...

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

Pastor: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. People: But if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from a...

If you never left your home and avoided all interaction with other people, you couldn’t be characterized as a loving person. Instead, you might even be unloving because of your lack of concern for oth...

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

It is human to err, it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

The other thing that helps me deal with my compulsion to control things through my direct involvement and my fear of missing out is what Henri Nouwen has called “the ministry of absence.” Jesus modele...

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

“I’m not a good person” is a shockingly countercultural thing to say. We all want to think we’re “clean” and that we’ve avoided whatever “big sins” are on our own personal lists. But we trust ourselve...

You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. We are all on very good term...

The most insidious deception in human history is the lie that says, “God is against you.”

In this excellent little character study, Tolstoy describes the inner monologue of the character Pierre Bezuhov from War & Peace , who is able to justify and convince himself that a promise made ...

John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a nig...

Arguments are ineffectual unless supported by events.

I am ignorant of His designs, but I will not cease to believe in them because I cannot penetrate them. And I will prefer to doubt my own lights rather than His justice.

God of grace, you ask us to pray without ceasing, yet we admit to you that we are easily distracted. Days and weeks can pass where we don’t acknowledge you. Neglecting our relationship with you, we de...

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." In ...

Almost every parent experiences that lovely moment when small child says, “Mommy, Daddy, my shadow is following me. I remember my daughter Maggie, maybe two or three years old. Dancing around our driv...

Many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently all we can do is pretend to believe we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo repentance and pseudo bliss.