the sin that so easily trips us up

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

There is that one sin that gets you, that one sin that you seem to have no power over. It does not matter how you try, it is there. You can conquer it for a while and you begin to think you have the answer to it all, but it comes back with a vengeance without any warning.

It sits there, idling under the surface like an unholy engine, waiting for a moment of weakness to come back.

It is embarrassing to you, because you thing of yourself better than that. No one else knows of your struggle with this sin, but it doesn’t matter. You know. And the secret of this failure in your life – although private – is painful.

You are a Christian, maybe even a pastor or elder, you have been in the Lord for a long time. You are mature, you teach Bible class, you preach, people look  up to you for advice and counsel in living and you give it freely.

You love others and you love God and you love his word. You are grateful for the sacrifice the Lord gave for you when he sent Jesus to die for you. And you have accepted that sacrifice and given your heart to him. You know your place in the kingdom is assured.

Yet – there is that sin.

You hate it because it demeans you. It stands between you and God. It is ugly and it makes you feel dirty.

But it is there, idling away, just waiting for a moment of weakness, a moment of laxity. When that moment comes, there it is, almost as if it had never gone away. Wham!

And you hate it.

You fast and pray but it comes back again and again. You have no power over it.

So what do you do? You can either accept it or reject it, you think.

If you accept it, you learn to live with it and go ahead and pursue it. That, of course, is wrong.

If you reject it, you fight against it day after day, with all of your time spent in trying to keep it away. That seems impossible.

Or a third thing. You can know that it is there and trust God to help. You mean, go ahead and do it and figure God will help? No.

It is, after all, a sin and needs to be gone from your life. But if it is there and you know it is, you can also know that God is greater than that sin.

Even if you do that which is wrong, you can know that God loves you anyway. Not only that, but he knows you will sin.

The sin is wrong, yes, but you are holy and righteous. And as long as you try, you will still be holy.

You do all you can to get rid of the sin, even sometimes to what seems like the plucking out of your eye or the lopping off of your hand. But in the end, it is God who enables, it is God who saves, it is God who delivers and loves you anyway.

All sin and fall short of the glory (Romans 3:23)

If we say we have no sin, we lie and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).

You have to remember that we all are sinners and everybody in the world, no matter how holy or righteous they may seem, are beset with some sin that they can do nothing about.

And if they have any love for God, they hate that sin. But they love God and he loves them in spite of the sin.

Keep on keeping on. Keep on working on the sin, trying to excise it from your life. All those people who came before and will come after also had a sin like that in some way.