Self Examination and Repentance In Different Stages of Life

One of the spiritual disciplines is self-examination. This discipline designed to promote spiritual growth by making one aware of his or her sins, confess those sins, and repent of those sins. Making the Christian aware of sin is difficult because we have blind spots. The Christian may not see certain sins due to a hardening of the heart. Another reason one might find sins difficult to observe is that the Christian has properly repented of the sins of his youth and grown to feel that sinning for the most part except for small sins was mostly indicative of those sins of his or her youth. As a child or a youth one commonly has a different set of temptations than an adult. The adult Christian who has moved beyond childhood temptations or youth temptations may feel that there is relatively little wrong in his life. The secret though is that at the new maturity level, there is a new set of temptations.

Having recently gone through a season of my life that was marked by religious pride and self-sufficiency, I now see that my sin was invisible to me. Pride often does that. One thing that bothers me is to see how long it took me to get there and how long it took me to get out of the pattern. I spent years building more and more self-sufficiency and it has taken years to get out of it. I may not be scot-free, but for the most part, I am in a new season of life. It will have it's own set of temptations of which I must be aware.

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