Tired of Struggling with Sin? | ask Theocast

The Shame of Repeated Sin and the Question of Assurance

So, you've sinned again, you feel the guilt and the shame, and you're asking a very important question. How do I know I'm a Christian? Because I keep doing the same thing over and over. Please stay tuned.

Hi, I'm John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church and host of Theocast. This is Ask Theocast, where we answer your questions from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. If you find this video helpful, please hit that like button.

That helps us out. Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell that lets you know when our next video comes out. As a pastor, one of the joys and things that I also struggle with is working with people who fall to the same sin over and over.

Let me describe this experience for you. You live in what I call the pool of shame. You just are drowning in it. You feel suffocated. You feel that everyone around you can see it. They're disappointed in you.

You want to confess it, but how do you confess the same thing again and again and again? What begins to seep into your brain, into your heart, into your soul is how can a Christian who loves Jesus supposedly keep falling into these sins all of the time?

There's a spiritual thing that happens to us when two things happen. One, when we hide our sin and we begin to give in to that same sin over and over again. I do believe that Christians can and will suffer from habitual sins, besetting sins, sins that happen to be the thing that you struggle with over and over again.

I do believe it's the normal part of the Christian life. If it was not so, we wouldn't have warnings from Paul about this, the battle against the flesh and the spirit, how sometimes the flesh wins, or even in Romans 7, where Paul says, the things I don't want to do, I keep doing those things.

There is this constant struggle. Hebrews 3 says, consider how to build one another up so that you aren't hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We can be hardened by sin. There are two responses. Biblically, I want to help you think through.

Confessing Sin to One Another in the Church

Most of the time, we, in our besetting sins, the sin that keeps stripping us up, we don't confess it to people because we don't feel safe. We don't feel as if there's a room. There's room within this clutterness of our Christian life that this won't come in and set a grenade off in a relationship or set a grenade off in a church context.

If you were to confess that you have this ongoing struggle, they would reject you. They would think less of you. They would remove you. There are so many fears. The reason I know this to be true is that I have people who sit across from me and I finally get them to confess what they're really struggling with.

When they do, there's this sense of relief because what do they receive? Love and compassion and forgiveness. This is why James says in James 5 .13, confess your sins to one another. It is not a verse that is on people's walls, but I want it to be in my office.

I just got a new office and I want a big sign that says, confess your sins to one another. Why? Because there's freedom and joy in knowing I don't suffer alone. So when we think about suffering, we think about persecution or cancer or we lose a job, but we also suffer from our flesh.

Why Self-Improvement Cannot Defeat Besetting Sin

We want to somehow be strong enough to know that, no, I've got this. This sin I keep tripping up on, if I try harder, do more, read more books, journal, whatever it is that you want to put in there, and it doesn't work.

It doesn't work for years. I have people that I've met that are in their late 70s and they're still struggling with the same sin and it has crushed them spiritually because we have somehow got it in our brain that we have to figure out how to do this on our own.

Otherwise, we're going to prove we're truly not God's children. I have to overcome this sin or I'm not God's children. I'm not God's child and I'm going to prove to God that I'm legit. I'm prove to God that I'm real.

Well, you don't need to prove anything to God. God does everything, including your own heart. You don't even know your own heart. God knows your own heart. God doesn't say, well, I need you to prove to me that you mean business.

That is Roman Catholicism. That is anti-gospel. That is anti-Reformation and it is heresy. We don't prove anything to God. Now, do we need to prove things to each other? Obviously. Otherwise, you can't identify elders.

I mean, how else do you know? These men need to show that they're faithful, but that's very different than trying to prove something to God. This is my encouragement to you in this video. You need to be able to find a place where you can struggle day after day with a community of people that care for you as you struggle against your flesh and your sin.

You were never designed to live the Christian life as the Lone Ranger. That is not you. It does not exist. I mean, just go on with the Lone Ranger example. We all love to wear masks and kind of hide behind who we really are, but in the body of Christ, we should be able to walk into that place and be fully exposed, theologically naked.

We should be able to see everything about everyone and think to ourselves, but by God's grace, I will not survive another day of this. I can't help but going back to things like Ephesians 4, when it says, when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love or Galatians 6, where he says that those of us who are spiritual to go to those who are entrapped in sin.

Listen, if you're not in a good church that cares about you, that knows you, you can't have those believers that come and that care for you and pull you out of that sin that you're trapped in. A lot of people look for books.

They look for podcasts. They look for something they can do. I think the Bible is very clear. If you are struggling with sin, you need a church that's going to administrate Christ to you, that's going to hold you up, that's going to carry that burden, that's going to be there for when you fall so that you can become strong enough to guess what, not just not sin, but then turn and do the same for your brother.

Strong and Weak Christians Carrying One Another's Burdens

The Bible does describe strong Christians versus weak. It is in multiple passages. You can talk about it in Galatians 6, Romans 15. In both cases, it says those of you who are strong have an obligation or have the capacity to care for the failings of the weak.

So if you describe yourself right now as a weak Christian who is falling into sin, you need a strong brother there to hold you up. You know what their job is to do? Not to judge you, not to give you things to do.

That's what the crazy thing is. Sometimes we go to a stronger brother and they're like, well, you just need to read your Bible more, you need to journal more, you need to discipline your more. No, it says consider how to build one another up.

It's not give them more to do, it's actually care for them by speaking the gospel truths to them, the joys of Christ, our assurance and hope. So the conclusion is if you're struggling with a besetting sin, find a church that you can confess that to, that you can receive grace and mercy, you can be strengthened by the body and the different gifts that are in there.

It's actually more important than your physical health, your spiritual health. You can actually have joy and rest and comfort and delight in the midst of struggling with your sin because you're not doing it alone.

You're being encouraged by your brothers and sisters. You aren't being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We talk about being obedient and holy. I find these parts of scripture is quite funny. Those are in there.

They absolutely say, do not forsake the dissembling of yourselves. Consider how to build one another up. Care for each other, carry each other's burdens. I'll provide all these passages down below. We should obey those because that's how God has designed your soul to be cared for.

The administration of the word and sacrament, the body of believers carrying each other and caring for each other. Hopefully this is encouraging. Please leave your comments below. We try and read all of those and respond.

We'll see you next time.