I use to be a liar. I use to lust after women. I use to be a selfish self-centered piece of garbage. I use to think people owed me something. I had a few other sins that are even too heinous to place into this post.
Throughout my childhood and teenage years I looked at and read the Bible as well as watched movies with a Biblical theme, but I never REALLY asked Christ into my life. I was like most out there in the world, thinking myself to be a Christian but in reality I was not. I was at the most a hypocrite at the least an ignorant male. I thought myself to be a good person, but I saw more than once how I hurt others, was it intentional? Sometimes I would have to say yes.
On June 24th 1986 everything changed for me. On that night I asked Jesus Christ into my heart. On that night I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I stopped being a liar that day and I stopped be selfish and self-centered. Did I mess up? Yes I did. Did I totally stop lying? No I did not, but I was no longer the liar that I was. Living a lie within a lie to hide a lie. No that person died that night and the person I was when I was twelve returned to live within me and so lying become something that happens very rarely.
Do I still do selfish acts? Yes I do, but not to the degree that all that is important to me is me. I am quick to realize that I have done a selfish act and I feel remorse and sorrow over my actions and when possible I ask forgiveness from the person I have wronged. (Which is usually my wife). I have a conscience now where before I did not.
Not all my sins died that night. Some sins are still with me, but as each day passes these sins fall away dead and useless. It was not till a few months ago that I stopped lusting after women. As for my more heinous sins those did die that summer night in 1986, but I know for a fact that they did cross my mind once or twice in the last twenty-nine years but I turned it over to God through Christ and soon those thoughts fell away dead once again.
I know it is Satan testing me. I know it is also God pruning me and making me into not only a better servant unto Him but a better person.
I write this confession hoping it will shine a light unto to those that are like I was. Thinking they are “Christian” when in reality they are not. Through Jesus there is truly a removal of sin. You are no longer the person you once were. You are truly born again and you no longer think like you did just a short time before you asked Christ into you. I know that I become the person I was before the age of accountability took over and I fell deeper and deeper into sin. That person of sin is dead as are the sins that were within that version of me.
As I stated before. I am by no means perfect and any that say all your sins are taken from you when you are born again are not being honest; not only with you but themselves. It is an ongoing journey. One that will have no ending till God calls us unto Him.
As I said the other day to someone that posted “I thank God that I have awaken to another day.” my reply to them was “God let you wake up because you have forgotten to do something for Him.” Each day I awaken here in this temporal life I strive to understand what it is I have not done for God that makes Him say “It is not his time to come to Me.” Someday He will call me and it is then through my continued struggle to know and learn more about Him and His Son and their ways that I will know that I have done well for Him and I will look upon Him with joy and happiness, for I feel he will say unto me “You have done well.”