How to deal with personal sin



My sin:


  • Do I beat myself endlessly?
  • Do I perform penance?  Works?  Weep more?  Confess more?  Perform some righteous acts to prove how sorry I am?
  • Do I read more Bible?  Go to church more?  Refuse the fellowship of the Lord's Table?
  • Do I fast?
  • Do I tell everyone about how awful I am--what a rotten sinner I am--how much I have failed?
  • What can I do?
  • What must I do?

From The Valley of Vision
A collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions





As the Hymn Writer Elizabeth C. Clephane (1830-1869) wrote:

Beneath the cross of Jesus
I fain would take my stand,
The shadow of a mighty rock
Within a weary land;
A home within the wilderness,
A rest upon the way,
From the burning of the noontide heat,
And the burden of the day.

O safe and happy shelter,
O refuge tried and sweet,
O trysting place where Heaven’s love
And Heaven’s justice meet!
As to the holy patriarch
That wondrous dream was giv’n,
So seems my Savior’s cross to me,
A ladder up to Heav’n.

There lies beneath its shadow
But on the further side
The darkness of an awful grave
That gapes both deep and wide;
And there between us stands the cross
Two arms outstretched to save
A watchman set to guard the way
From that eternal grave.

Upon that cross of Jesus
Mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of One
Who suffered there for me;
And from my stricken heart with tears
Two wonders I confess;
The wonders of redeeming love
And my unworthiness.

I take, O cross, thy shadow
For my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine
than the sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by,
To know no gain or loss,
My sinful self my only shame,
My glory all the cross.

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