Sin, Confession, and Mercy

So, on the way home from Holly Ranch the other day, we were talking about our experiences during the Prayer Lab on Saturday morning and I was telling the girls in Ashleigh's car about how as I sat at the confession table and began making a list of my recent transgressions, God just sort of pushed all that to the side, pointed right at the deepest sin issue in my heart and told me He wanted to deal with that first. Bluch! It was not fun, but having that uncovered before Him and out in the open between us has given me so much hope as I seek to continue growing with the Lord in this season of my life. That's when our resident "Speaker of Truth" - Emily - asked me an excellent question that has stayed with me ever since. "So, Kristen, how are you going to let God deal with that sin issue? What's going to be different? How's that gonna look?" Ugh! I nearly choked trying to come up with an answer. I finally admitted I wasn't entirely sure except that I knew I had to stay tender before the Lord because it's primarily been an issue of hard-heartedness and refusal to honestly seek Him. The question has stayed with me, and today, I keep thinking back to the following passage from Micah 7 that I heard John Piper preach on earlier this year. Here's what it says ...

7 But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD,
I wait for God my Savior;
my God will hear me.
8 Do not gloat over me, my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the LORD will be my light.
9 Because I have sinned against him,
I will bear the LORD's wrath,
until he pleads my case
and establishes my right.
He will bring me out into the light;
I will see his righteousness.

As Emily herself often reminds us, Satan is such a loser! He'd love for me to make my sin and my confession and my struggle to stay clean before the Lord to be about failure and about somehow letting him have victory over me, but it cannot be. When I sin, I sin against the Lord, the same God who has paid the ultimate price for me to be in right relationship with Him. What an incredible truth! I cast myself at His mercy today!