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Hi! I'm a Sinner. And My Life? Is Kinda Scary. - Leanne White

This past week's reading made me reflect on a passage of Jonah I studied recently. "Dark Night of the Soul" is really highlighting sins, which is something I have been contemplating a lot these past few days in particular, and the thought of sins and their consequences stirs up many emotions of guilt, fear, and shame. Although conviction is necessary, we shouldn't feel completely hopeless.

In the book of Jonah, Jonah realises that his sin merits God's wrath. He think the only way for the sailors to survive is for the sinner, himself, to be destroyed. It is so easy for us to feel so unworthy and undeserving of God's grace and mercy, because we know that sin can't exist in the Presence of God. However, God also spares Jonah. Sure he spent a good while in the belly of a whale, but it was a chance for him to turn to the Lord for forgiveness.

Like Jonah, we are condemned to death and the wrath of God, but God is merciful. Not to mention, He physically came to earth to die and have all the debt of the world pinned to Him as a criminal on a cross to make a way for mercy. Like Jonah, we can be sanctifies, our hearts changed and made more Christ-like through our trials.

In short, reading "Dark Night of the Soul" makes me sad to think about sin, but hope can be found in knowing that with Christ our fate doesn't have to be death. I have been praying a specific prayer that I encourage you to pray also: to be perfected in love, because 1 John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear."

I replied to Braylan Stringfellow and Caroline Tucker

Comments

  1. Caroline TuckerApril 12, 2021 at 7:06 PM

    Yes!! This text convicted me in the amount of sin I commit as well as how I follow it. thankfully, I know that I can and am forgiven of those sins and the future ones I will commit. I do not know how people live without the hope that Christ provides. this gives me all the more motivation to share the hope I am given with those who have not received it.

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  2. Brooke HutchesonApril 12, 2021 at 7:21 PM

    Your post is very well written, Leanne. I think your post makes me think about how we are all seen equally and sinful to God. Isiah 64:6 says, "But we are all seen as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we do not fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." The question is, "What are we going to do about repetitive sin, and our we willing to fix it?"

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