Reflect on God's Comfort

I became a mom for the first time in 2021 and it has been one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring journeys but it has also been exhausting and challenging. I have had two women in my life who have had babies this year so far and one with a baby on the way. I have spent additional prayer time on these beautiful women and have offered encouragement and gifts especially after the initial giving has gone down as it tends to do once the newborn is not as new anymore. It’s been amazing and life giving just as much for me as I hope it has been for them! Here’s a recent picture of my little man!

Sometimes we/I need to allow people in a little deeper to show them the love God has shown to me not always in words sometimes only in action

My friend from Canada stopped communicating with me a few weeks ago, I thought because I am Russian and live in Russia, and there is a war in Ukraine. I thought she blamed me, like all my relatives who live in Ukraine now. But yesterday I texted her and it turned out that her boyfriend had dumped her and she feel very sad. I pray for her, support her and offer my help, send gifts and letters by mail, do everything I can so that she does not feel lonely.

so recently I have not been able to reflect on the word of god and I know I am supposed to make time for god but I feel not worth anything to God but that is not true and I usually think that I am worthy of him but I need to remember and all of us Christians have to remember is that no matter what he wants you and you are worthy

The New Testament tells us that Jesus’s righteousness is credited to us when accept him as our savior. It’s the idea that when you experience God's forgiveness, he doesn't just erase your debt so you have a zero balance, but you experience the righteousness of Jesus. It is as if Jesus’s account gets transferred over to your account so that when God looks at you, he doesn't just see a zero balance, but he sees the righteousness of Christ credited to you. Many people grew up thinking when you become a Christian, you simply follow Jesus and he forgives you. And while that's a big piece of the Gospel, but it doesn't stop with just his forgiveness; you also experience the righteousness of Jesus. He doesn't just look at you and see someone who owes nothing, but he looks at you and he sees the righteousness of Christ on your account. But this is not the way many of us have been discipled to think of sexual sin. Instead, we were discipled with this idea that even though Jesus has paid your debt and your sins have been forgiven, you're still handed this burden and it's insisted that you continue to carry it. This is not the Gospel of Jesus. The Gospel of Jesus says that you have been freed from the weight of your sins. When you surrender to God, you align your life with him, and you ask him for forgiveness and grace, you give him all your broken pieces to repair and make new.

Sin can, sometimes unknowingly, begin to affect every area of your life, particularly your relationships with others. These people have may not done anything wrong to upset or offend you, but when you're simply around them you feel guilty because of what you did wrong. You feel guilt and shame. And instead of dealing with that sin, letting God cleanse you, and take that away, you just stay away from these people in your life that love and care about you. because their existence feels like an indictment on you.  However, there are some simple questions that you can ask yourself to honestly diagnose if you have let sin change and possibly harm your relationships. For instance, do you have a tendency to be fairly critical of other people? The people who are most negative towards the sins of others are often the people who are dealing with their own guilt and shame over their own sin. They haven't experienced God's grace in that area of their lives. So, the way they deal with that guilt is by pointing sin out in other people's lives, in an attempt to try to make themselves feel better by drawing attention to what other people have done. But when you have experienced God's grace and his forgiveness, it makes you gracious.

The physical and emotional consequences of sin, while not necessarily instantaneous, are very real. We often go back to the very thing that has caused the sin when we realize the problems or struggles that it has caused in our lives; we turn to the very thing that got us into this position to begin with. It is like drinking salt water while trying to quench your thirst. It just doesn’t work. So, we find ourselves feeling more withdrawn, more anxious, angrier, more irritable, more rejected, or lonelier. But where do you turn when you feel these emotions? You can't disregard what God says about sex and sexuality without violating yourself. You can't violate what God says without violating your own body.  You are not able to sin sexually without causing wreckage to the way that God has wired you. It can be confusing, traumatizing, and devastating. But what often hurts most of all is the belief that you are the only one going through this pain and struggle. The enemy wants to sell you that lie and wants to tell you that you're the only one with this experience. Nothing could be farther from the truth though. All of us on some level have experienced sexual brokenness, whether it was something that you did or something that's been done to you. We've all experienced some pain from sexual sin in this world. Nobody is exempt from that. The Church should not be a place where people point fingers and speak self-righteous judgment over people because of their sin. The Church should testify of the difference that Jesus makes, how he gives us grace and healing, and how he redeems that which is broken. 

In Psalm 51, David calls out his own sin, which was certainly difficult for him after trying so hard to simply cover up what he had done wrong. One of the challenges for many of us, because it’s not easy or comfortable, is to identify the sin present in our lives. Calling sin out as sin requires courage.  Sexual sin is defined for us as anything different than what God had in mind when he created sex and sexual intimacy. God's design was for sexual intimacy to be enjoyed between a husband and a wife within the covenant of marriage. So, instead of giving us a comprehensive or exhaustive list of what entails sexual sin, the Bible simply defines God's design and plan. And if it's not a part of this design, then it's sin and sexual immorality.  It can be easy to minimize sexual sin or even blame other people for our sin though. We also can get in the habit of blaming God when faced with our sin. This was how this was how Adam handled his sin in Genesis when he's confronted with it. How does he answer God when asked about eating the forbidden fruit? First, he blames his wife, saying she's the one who gave it to him. Then, Adam blames God. He says, “The woman who you gave me, if you hadn't given this woman to me, then this wouldn’t have happened.” And we do this too when confronted with our sin, just like Adam. We blame other people and we blame God, which prevents us to accessing the freedom from sin that God wants to give us all.