Careful For Nothing

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 6:23) 

Last week I began this series on inner-healing prayer by writing about the crisis that occurs in the soul when the mind – the rational thinking and willing aspect of the soul — hears the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ and believes, but the heart – to which we attribute feelings, intuition, imagination and the emotions – is not able to process this good news in a way that liberates it from a sense of shame, self-hatred or unforgiveness.  What is needed is a way to deliver the truth of the gospel so that the heart can “hear” it and, through the grace of Jesus Christ, be released from the grievous effects of sin which hold it captive.  Inner-healing prayer is an effective way to accomplish this.

In order to explain how inner-healing prayer works, I must first address how and why sin is so devastating to the human soul.  As I’ve written before in my series, Losing Control, sin is not simply a series of things done or left undone.  More importantly, it is a deadly condition that afflicts every human being.  There is no escaping it.  Apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ, it is impossible not to sin.  We will inevitably behave selfishly, peevishly, greedily, and lustfully even when we do not intend to.  The apostle Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature [my nature apart from Christ]. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.  (7:15, 17-19, editorial emphasis mine)

Even the most saintly of people cannot escape Continue reading →