sin on Vulnerability

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? How did we get here? When relationships disintegrate and fall apart it is a fair question to ask. The question may come on the brink of...

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration Destruction No More Bonus Content: Video prep session with Scott Bullock on Genesis 9:8-17 . Password: fHUk*p2* AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we ...

Before we get to Easter, we need to linger: in the vulnerability of the basin and the towel at the remembrance and promise of the table in the struggle and betrayal of the garden in the shadows and sh...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

The temptation once yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a hole which lets out a flood.

We grow in part by confessing our faults and weaknesses to each other (James 5:16; Eccl. 4:10). If we are always being strong and without needs, we are not growing, and we are setting ourselves up for...

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

Confession is verbal humiliation.

Public confession requires several conditions. First, a person who has acted against the integrity of the Body, the integrity of its faith, must be prepared to expose himself because what matters is h...

Why is shame so painful? In this short excerpt, professor and philosopher Gregg Ten Elsof provides a helpful insight: The experience of shame always involves the sense of diminished social standin...

Every person enjoys dignity and suffers from depravity. The structure of personality is a result of the interaction of these two dynamics.

Shame has two conflicting instincts. It needs to isolate and hide, and it needs a community in which to be transparent. Hiding, of course, usually wins. It is the easier and more natural of the two. B...

The more enlightened we are, the more greatness and vileness we discover in man.

Lord, you tell us in your word that when we know the good we ought to do and fail to do it, we are in sin. Can we truly know the extent of our need for your grace? Are we conscious of the multitude of...

Repentance resulting from self-examination is a lifelong endeavor, occasionally surfacing in the public or private act of confession as an act of “courageous memory” in recalling one’s past.

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 ...

We pause this morning to confess our sin to You. We enter into confession with both gratitude and reluctance. We’re grateful we have a gracious God to whom we can confess, but we’re reluctant that a d...

We know mistakes were made.

Pastor: O Spirit of God, help my infirmities. When I am pressed down because of my sin, perplexed and not knowing what to do, help me. All: When you see that I desire evil things, delighting in sinf...

Confession allows us to be the worst of sinners and yet remain confident that God is committed to us still. Holy desire is best paired with confession.

Heavenly Father, we confess that our sinfulness gives us fear and keeps us from pursuing your will. We live with ideas of safety and failure that do not make room for your call to set our lives aside ...

It is not finished, Lord, There is not one thing done, There is no battle of my life That I have really won. And now I come to tell thee How I fought to fail, My human, all too human, tale Of weakness...

I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope.

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...

Holy God, we confess that we are quick to look through the window and slow to look in the mirror. We confess that we can see how others stumble, but we do not see how we contributed to their stumble. ...

To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.

The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.

Merciful and Holy God, We bow before You in heartfelt confession, acknowledging that we are a broken people, living in a broken world. This world is dark with the stain of sin. Your design for creatio...

The next time you say something deceitful, hurtful or proud, you cannot say “I don’t know what came over me.” Nothing came over you. Such sins come _out_of you. They come from a wellspring that is ver...