my deadly disease.

I like to compartmentalize my sin. I've persuaded myself that my problems are condensed in a certain form of sin. that they only affect a certain area of my life.

And so every week, I come home from church wondering how I can be so convicted after each sermon. How can I hear about idols, stealing, hurtful words, and covetousness, and be hit head on by each of them?

Maybe my sin isn't as insignificant as I thought. maybe it's more pervasive than I cared to realize. John Calvin agreed, "No one knows the one-hundredth part of the sin that clings to his soul."

I picture it like cancer. If you have cancer throughout your body, you can deny that it's cancer. you can ignore it. you can decide to only treat one area. But if there's cancer, then it's only going to continue to grow.
You have to be rid of it. all of it. It will be more painful, but if left alone, it will slowly destroy you.

I want God to heal me of this disease. It will be a slow, painful process. It will take my whole life. But I'm willing to let Him have at it. And in the meantime, the more sin He exposes, the more I'm reminded of how beautiful grace is.

In the book "The Valley of Vision", a collection of puritan prayers, one puritan wrote, "My sins are more than the wide sea’s sand, but where sin abounds there is grace more abundant. Look to the cross of thy Beloved Son, and view the preciousness of His atoning blood."