Love the sin you're in.

It's that annoying soap commercial that gets stuck in your head forever.  It rang through my thoughts today, thinking how everything in our culture tells us to be comfortable in our own sin. To accept it. To tolerate it. To delight in it. To celebrate it. To feed it.

I shudder. I loathe sin. When I see it in me, it makes me nauseated. (Wondering if the word abhor has kind of a vomiting rejection implication?) I run to Jesus like a little kid in footsie pajamas running into her parent's room because she's going to throw up. (Holding fast!)  I need Him like that. It's an emergency, and it needs to come out. I know that I will be safe in His arms, and find relief, comfort and healing for my soul. And I know that He loves me and accepts me, all whiney and crying and covered in puke, just the same.

"Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good."Romans12:9

Love the sin I'm in? This is the same flesh that is at enmity against our God who is Love. It is this sin that separates me from Perfect Love. Sin isn't cute.  And it's in me. This morning alone, I caught thoughts of utter selfishness, defensive pride and smug self righteousness that so shocked me, I dropped my car keys and they fell under my car. I had to get on my knees to get them back, which is probably where I needed to be anyway. I love that the Holy Spirit is so good to convict me of sin, so I can turn to Jesus and be washed and live in the freedom He died to secure for me. And yet, I am always sad. I am grieved over my sin- how it separates me from my God and from others, how it destroys relationships. I thought we were through with all that! I thought we killed it. It's back. It's a fight that I will keep on fighting, the lifelong war of my flesh against His Spirit. The war that only Christ can win, and has already won. And I long for the days to come, of peace, and free from the disgusting presence of sin, in the beautiful presence of Christ. I love that skin.

^" So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Romans 7:21-25a