Prayer 3: “God, forgive me.” Once people feel the full weight of what they have done by their sin, they often move into fix-it mode. They want to do a greater amount of good than the harm they have done. Or they want to penalize themselves in some way, as if they could in that …
Continue reading “33051 Step 3. Turning Around: Prayer 3 and 4”
Prayer 5: “God, empower me.” When we pray for cleansing, we are asking for the spiritual effects of our past sin to be wiped away. When we pray for empowerment, on the other hand, we are asking for God’s help to avoid a repetition of our sin in the future. This is the fifth and …
Saying We Are Sorry Just as we need to make things right with God, so we need to try to make things right with those whom we have hurt by our sin. In fact, Jesus said that reconciliation is so important that it is worth interrupting worship for. “If you are standing before the altar …
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What Do You Believe about Others? It stands to reason that if we cannot see ourselves as we are, there is no way that our perceptions of others can be accurate either. We look at others through lenses that have been distorted by our own mistaken beliefs. We do not see them as God sees …
Continue reading “33042 Step 2. Embracing Truth: What Do You Believe about Others?”
A Strategy That Works In this life “we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror,” admitted Paul the apostle. Mirrors at the time Paul wrote were mere polished pieces of metal, and so their imperfect reflection, especially in the worst of them, well represented how the truths about life are often murky or incomplete …
Continue reading “33041 Step 2. Embracing Truth: A Strategy That Works”
Our enemy, Satan, does not like it when we repent of sin. He wants to pull us back into sin as soon as he can, and he will use every weapon in his arsenal to that end. That is why we can never relax our vigilance once we have repented. Life happens day by day, …
Both of your authors know what it is like to be ill. I (Bill) have been diagnosed with a progressive lung disease, while I (Henry) have suffered from Parkinson’s disease for years. For each of us, it was crucial to get an accurate diagnosis in order to begin the appropriate form of treatment for our …
Since the beginning of Campus Crusade for Christ, I (Bill) have made it my policy never to be alone with any woman other than my wife, Vonette. I have seen the way other Christian leaders have failed in the area of sexual purity and have brought disaster upon their ministries as a result. Even the appearance of …
The truth. It is sometimes hard to discover and even harder to accept. As much as we may like to think that we are smart people who have got life all figured out, we actually get off base in our thinking or our feelings in many ways. As we have already seen (chapter three), we …
The New Testament word for “repent” means to turn around—we turn away from sin and toward God. After adopting a correct view of God and revising false beliefs, step three in the process we are outlining is to repent of your sinful habit. Over the years, I (Henry) have defined a five-part process of repentance that …