For several years after becoming a Christian I was living a life that seemed to fall short of my God-given potential. Sin continued to be present in my life and appeared to be getting the better of me. I tried to be good, I tried to resist sin, but consistently failed. I thought that I was supposed to control myself—I was to choose to be good and do right in my own strength—but that simply was not working. As I tried to avoid sin, I would do well for a while, but ultimately would return to a sin that I thought was behind me. The inconsistency was making me miserable because I was not having the “success” I thought should be the norm for every Christ-follower.
There’s a term I became familiar with that described what I was feeling—CONVICTION. You might call that feeling “GUILT.” Both words are appropriate. We know that when we do something wrong we stand “CONVICTED” or “GUILTY” before God for our sin. It is normal to experience CONVICTION or GUILT when we ignore God's Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ has given us His Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit indwells us—lives within us at the point of Salvation. So when we do something that goes against what He desires for us, HE tells us. And if we ignore His voice the sense of conviction and guilt will grow.
Before I understood how this all works someone once asked me, “What do you think about conviction?" I replied instantly, "I hate it! It makes me so uncomfortable." He followed up by asking, "Why don't you like the Holy Spirit’s communication with you? Isn’t this something you should receive gladly?” That brief lesson helped me see that conviction is not something I should run from, but rather it is God's loving communication directing me away from sin. We are not being punished when the Holy Spirit convicts us, we are being instructed how to respond to a given situation—He is talking to us!
The circles below helped me visualize how this all works. Each circle represents a person's life at three different moments or phases.
The first circle to the left represents our life before we accept Christ. The chair (or the driver seat, or throne) in the middle is occupied by each of us. It represents the fact that we are in control of our lives. Christ and His Holy Spirit are not in our lives but are on the outside (depicted by the cross in the lower left-hand corner). The “S”s in the circle and out of the circle represent sin. The first circle is our lives before we became Christians.
The second circle represents our lives with Christ (this is the point after we’ve accepted Jesus as our Savior and Lord). Notice, the Holy Spirit is on the throne and we are in submission to His leadership. Also, there is no sin in circle two, but sin has been replaced with Joy, Peace, and Freedom.
The third circle to the far right is our lives when we decide to ignore God's truth and allow temptation to get the better of us. Sin is once again part of our reality. It's important to note that Christ hasn’t left us (He’ll never leave or forsake us, Hebrews 13:5). But we've allowed sin to enter—taking control away from God's Holy Spirit and choosing once again to sit in the driver’s seat.
If you look at the space in between circles two and three (towards the top) you see how temptation tries to persuade us to sin. At the same, the Holy Spirit is counseling us with truth to do what is right. When we choose to listen to temptation over the Holy Spirit’s voice, we give birth to sin in our lives—we move from circle two (where there is peace, joy, and freedom) to circle three where there is heart ache, guilt, and shame. In essence, what we’ve done is taken away the control we gave to the Spirit of God. This is the point in which we stand in conviction—guilty of our sin. The apostle Paul calls giving in to Satan’s temptation and rejecting the Holy Spirit’s voice “grieving the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30). At this point we feel defeated, guilty and miserable—we have grieved the very person to whom we have committed our lives. We cry out along with the man at the end of Romans chapter 7: “Oh wretched man or woman that I am.”
Something every Christ-follower should understand—for encouragement—is that even the most seasoned Christ-follower will fall into sin. In the apostle John’s letter to the church (1st John) he wrote in the first chapter that if we deny that we have sin we make God out to be a liar. So, every Christ-follower will at one time or another find themselves in the third circle where the Holy Spirit has been "dethroned," and sitting in the driver’s seat. But, John tells us what we should do to rectify that situation. In 1st John chapter one verse nine, he writes,
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
When you look up the word confess in the dictionary you will find something similar to: “admit having done something wrong” or “acknowledge something to be true.” Our confession of sin is admitting we’ve done something wrong, or it is our agreement that the Holy Spirit's conviction is true. In order to experience forgiveness for the sin we’ve committed we need to come to a point where we say: “Heavenly Father, I agree with you, what I did was wrong, forgive me.” or “What You said is wrong is wrong. Forgive me.” And He will forgive our sins and He will purify us from ALL unrighteousness.
When we listen to the Holy Spirit like this, the Christian life becomes joyful, peaceful, free and full of love again. This is because we are returning to circle two where He is on the throne and sin is not affecting us.
My heart breaks for the Christ-followers who live in circle three. I lived there for years—years offending (grieving) the Spirit of God and ripping control of my life away from Him. I was on the throne of my life because I disregarded His guidance and allowed sin to enter into my relationship with Him. There are so many Christ-followers with anger issues, with lust issues, with addiction issues, with bitterness issues (etc.) who are choosing to live in circle three. In the same chapter of 1st John, he writes in verses five and six that
“…God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth" (1st John 1:5–6).
I was coming close to living a lie—my relationship with Christ was in danger of being a lie. The Holy Spirit was pushed off to a remote corner of my life because I was choosing to control rather than surrendering control to Him.
If you are in a similar position, where you have not understood this dynamic of relationship that you have with Christ, all you need to do is surrender to Him. This is accomplished through confession and repentance. This ministry of the Holy Spirit—SANCTIFICATION—will bring the Christian back to that victorious Christian life they experienced prior to sinning (circle 2). And when we consistently live this way—listening to the Holy Spirit's voice and confessing and repenting when we sin—we will grow because He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Sanctification is the continuous work of Jesus that takes place in our lives through His Holy Spirit. Sanctification is the work of being separated from sin for the expressed purpose of serving God.
The founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, wrote:
“Men and women who do not press on in their Christian experience to gain the fullness of their inheritance in Him will often become cold and formal. The evil in their own heart will assert itself again and may very likely overcome them, and their work will bring confusion and disaster to the cause of Christ” (Simpson, Fourfold Gospel, 25).
Praise be to God, we don’t have to live there. We can live where He is on the throne in our lives and we are responsive to Him. We can live where we are being used by God to encourage others rather than cause confusion to them. We can live listening to the Holy Spirit.
I hope and pray that you live in the joy, peace, and freedom that is possible in Christ.
