⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠

Throughout this season, we’ve examined how God views sin and the sinner. While God is not soft on sin, He is exceedingly gentle and compassionate to the sinner and knows our humanity and our frailty. We finish our discussion of the Gospel Waltz and the Sacred Struggle with the third step of the waltz: Love. We may also refer to this step as “obedience” or “action.”

When we seek to fight sin, we need to seek a change in our hearts – the root. We do this by targeting the three main actions of the heart. First, we target our cognition (beliefs) by weighing our beliefs with God’s Word. When we meditate on our beliefs, we can recognize where our beliefs about ourselves and our world do not align with our Father’s. For some of us, our relationships or our situations are influencing us to believe we aren’t loved or worthy, leading to destructive and sinful behavior to cope. Yet God understands this weakness, and He encourages the body of Christ to comfort and help the weak. As we understand more of His Word, we can reshape our thoughts and our feelings to align with the promises of God.

Next, when we recognize our affections (desires) are pointed away from God, we can position ourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts. We do this by beholding God and recognizing how He offers our hearts a more true, right, and beautiful version of our desires. Though we cannot produce God-honoring desires on our own, we can meditate on our Father and set aside time to know Him better. The more we understand His heart, the more willing we are to come to Him with our sins and our weakness.

Finally, we change our actions by making choices in our hearts that reflect God’s will. Even when our hearts don’t yearn to follow God, we can choose to act in a way that honors Him and honors others. To fight sin, we need to actively plan against it and set up safe guards and accountability within our community. Even when change is slow or we regress, our community reminds us to not grow weary in doing good.

Resources:

S8 Ep. 3 / The Capture of the Heart

Season 8 of Conversational Counseling on “The Sacred Struggle: Sin, Responsibility and The Journey to Transformation.”

To sign up for free visuals and discussion questions for this season click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Our theme music is by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠As Isaac⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This podcast is made possible by engineer and producer ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shane Selby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, executive producer ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Meleah Smith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠generous donors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Known Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Kocher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and Brenda Payne.

>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠

In the Gospel Waltz, believing is an important step we may overlook when moving from confession to action. When we confess, we must pause to believe and behold as God transforms our minds.

The devil intends that our sin will destroy us and those around us, but when we can view our failures as a way God draws us back to His heart, we begin to see more of His grace and love and to realize again and again that we can’t save ourselves by our own power. After we confess, we may choose to move to action, but we miss a beautiful step of repentance. Our confessed sin can become a catalyst for worship and for the continued transformation of our minds as we turn our eyes back to our loving and forgiving Father.

Through our confession and belief, we have the opportunity to fall even more in love with our Savior. He is a God who doesn’t require spiritual rituals for us to earn our salvation nor does He force us to hide in shame from our sin. Though there are often consequences for our sin, God welcomes us back after discipline. As we believe in Him, we can recognize who He is, what He’s done through the person and work of Jesus, and what He will do in our future and in the coming restoration.

Resources:

Character of God Series (Episode 1) - BibleProject

Still Sinning after All These Years - A Biblical Theology of Sinful Failure with Barbara Duguid

Extravagant Grace: God’s Glory Displayed in Our Weakness by Barbara Duguid

Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure by John Piper

Trusting God by Jerry Bridges

S1 Ep. 5 / Character of God: Sovereignty, Wisdom, Love

Season 8 of Conversational Counseling on “The Sacred Struggle: Sin, Responsibility and The Journey to Transformation.”

To sign up for free visuals and discussion questions for this season click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Our theme music is by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠As Isaac⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This podcast is made possible by engineer and producer ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shane Selby⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, executive producer ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Meleah Smith⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠generous donors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Known Ministries⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alex Kocher⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and Brenda Payne.