For God has not given sin power over me.

This is the post I hate to write. It's the post I'd rather cover up quickly with 5 or 6 inconsequential posts just so it gets buried a little faster. It's the post that I wish others couldn't read. It's the post that I'd like to pretend didn't exist within myself. At this exact moment though, I'm wishing it didn't exist mostly because I do not want to write this post. I guess it's time to get it over with though.

Within the recesses of my heart I imagine great things are happening. Purity is taking place, righteousness and other well known and pleasant fruits of the Spirit are growing. Instead, I found a dark and dirty section full of filth and fungi.

Two months ago I wrote this post where I told how I was praying for my replacement. The person who would take my place playing the piano for my church after I left.
And I mean every word of it still... I really do.
Really.

And then I went to visit the church and met my replacement. She's wonderful -she's even got the ability to play with soul, a particular ability I never managed myself. I truly enjoyed listening to her play.

And then it came... the thought that now that Sundays will no longer be a glaring reminder that I'm not there to play the piano for them I will lose my tentative connection to all these people I still long for and miss.
It gets worse, I even specifically refrained from e-mailing any of them this past week so I could see if they would remember me.

Can I tell you how much I'm not enjoying this confession?

But for all my years of Christian training, for all my posts on Christian growth, I'm still fighting hidden icebergs of sin. For all my talk, for all my hours of Christian service, sin still pops up and bites me. So guess what? No one is safe. And all those people you imagine as never having those embarrassing sins, the truly selfish ones that no one would want anyone to know about them (eg. this post) well, let me be the first to tell you - they do.

Worship leaders struggle with pornography, that church secretary is struggling with lust, that usher that has been so great a part of your church for 37 years struggles with greed and the temptation to steal. That childrens minister that you love so much and look up to for all he's done for your kids? He's got a problem with lying.

No one is safe. Not from the devil. The more you try to be clean, the more he'll try to smut you up.

So here's the thing I'm embracing out of it. The necessity of being a whole person. One that struggles with sin, looks at it and sees it for it's nastiness and then works to root it out. Hiding it, and pretending that sin never knocks on my door or could ever be found in my heart doesn't do as much good as this all-too-humbling post might. Exposing sin, and refusing to give it the power of shame over me.

I feel obstinate as I write this. My thoughts turned to how much I did not want anyone to know my foolishness and I realized that that was as much from the devil as the original sin was. The instinctive idea of hiding was disappointing to me. I believe the devil wants me to hide, to hide in a little hole of self-recrimination and imagine a world of perfect Christians that me and my selfish little ways will never measure up to. But I refuse.

All that said, I hope you got some good out of this post, because it killed me to write it. But that's the good part. No, the best part. You see, I needed to die. Romans 6:6