This is something I've been struggling with a lot lately. How do you reconcile grace/freedom with discipline/conviction/guilt? I really don't know the answer, and I haven't talked to someone who does. I think a lot of it has to do with my legalistic upbringing, always doing things "right."
Sometimes I just hate myself because I feel like a failure at Christianity. I try to make myself be good, go through the motions, thinking it's better to try than not. In the end though I'm left with guilt and feeling very dehumanizing.
So, I decided to try something.
I stopped reading my Bible. I got to a point where I was reading it regularly, but when occaisionally fogot/didn't have time/didn't want to, I felt super bad. Also, I was so legalistic about it. For me, reading the Bible is like studying for an exam. I have to extract everything from it that I can and memorize everything. Not much room for the Holy Spirit to work...I felt like I shouldn't be imprisonating myself in something as good and holy as God's word. It's not that I don't want to read it, because I still do sometimes, or that I don't want to learn from it.
I just feel like I have so many old, legalistic habits to un-do before I can truly live free.
But where does that leave me? Aren't I supposed to feel convicted when I sin? And when/where/how does grace fit in? I know, these are deep questions.
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Heh, I don't think anyone has an answer for this question. I mean, you are supposed to feel convicted when you sin, but I don't think guilt has to be a part of that conviction. Conviction makes you repent and keep from committing that sin again, but it shouldn't make you feel bad about yourself. We all feel guilt sometimes--for me especially when I think of Someone perfect dying for all of my imperfections, but the Cross is supposed to make us rejoice, not be sad. Anyway, I know where you're coming from with the legalism stuff. I was always praised for being a "good kid," which made me pick up a lot of legalistic tendencies because I always felt like I was letting someone down if I sinned (and for some reason I was more worried about letting *people* down than letting Jesus down). I think that legalism is still alive in some parts of my walk. I feel like Jesus should banish me from his presence for a lot of stuff I do, but I'm thankful that he won't. A lot of times I feel guilty for *not* feeling guilty--like when I just don't feel like reading my Bible. I treat my Bible like I'm studying for an exam, too. I see people around me who have huge passages memorized and who know all the random trivia, and I feel horrible and begin to think I'm a terrible Christian. But I think that's one of the devil's tactics. He takes away the joy in reading the Word so that it becomes a habit or a chore and not a privelege. So yeah, maybe not reading your Bible for a few days might help take away the guilt, but don't let it make you apathetic, because that's what the devil wants. Try just reading short passages and trying to pick one important thing out of it. Go back to the basics. I've been reading stuff lately that I've read a million times but since I'm not in a big in-depth study I'm getting little tidbits out of it that I had missed before. I have to pray pretty frequently for God to help me enjoy reading his Word and to help me appreciate what I'm reading so that I don't make it just a habit. I don't really know what to tell you about how to reconcile conviction and guilt and grace. You can't have one without the other. They are all good things to think on, but I guess we get in trouble when we lean too heavily on one or the other.
Anyway, I hope I made some sense in this. Hope it helps.
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