How come growing in Christ can take so long?  Part 1

Think of the joy and excitement when we first knew that Jesus forgave our sins and invited us into the kingdom. A new life! What a joy! And to gain some wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ! But this honeymoon stage ends.

Why? The reality that we are not yet perfected in Christ starts to raise its ugly head.

I could talk about a variety of ways that this imperfection shows itself. But I will dwell in this post on just one of the ways this happens:  Even when we belong to Jesus Christ, we don’t like to be corrected. More personally, even though I belong to Jesus Christ, I don’t like to be corrected.

Sure, as a new believer I came in rejoicing about how Jesus has forgiven my sins, BUT I did not see just how I am deeply flawed in the depths of my own being. In short, my sin problem was worse than I knew.

My own judgments about when I am right or wrong can’t be trusted.

I like to justify myself even when I am full of baloney.

It is so easy for any of us to fall into the trap of not believing what Jeremiah 17:9 says about us.

The heart is deceitful above all things

    and beyond cure.

    Who can understand it?

It is great that someone CAN understand our heart! The answer is Jesus Christ!

Good news for Part 2 next week: I’ll write about how my sin problem with accepting correction was worse than I knew, but Christ’s grace to work in my life was much greater than I knew!