The important word in the 1 John 1 passage is ALL
Submitted by Forgiven on 2002-07-8 16:42:03, Monday
In reply to When you fail ... submitted by BillBo on 2002-07-7 18:54:30, Sunday
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"if we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness." You've messed up. We've all messed up with greater or lesser extent of conscious effort at the time. We are either all forgiven or we're not. If we are forgiven, then hanging about with a sense of guilt is calling God a liar. I find that when I'm in that situation I try to use that passage to remind myself that I AM forgiven.... The other way to use the energy of the guilt is to try to work out what went wrong - and how you can avoid it in the future. I've never been in that position - I've never had a situation where I've been offered a sexual encounter out of the blue, and I have a sneaking suspicion I'd react rather similarly. Fortunately I'm not on the sort of trips where such things might happen, and I make sure I don't develop the social skills to cruise the bars of our local gay scene. I guess there are two issues for you; first off how to avoid that sort of encounter on a trip in the future (which unfortunately probably means avoiding any informal social contact whilst on such trips). But the second is to work out how to address the gap in your life that you're trying to fill by the incident - and that's really hard; in my case God has provided me with a number of people whom I describe as my YFs - though they're all at least 20 - that give me the food to keep going. The relationships came about by means that in retrospect are miraculous - though at the time each step 'just happened'; I just hope and pray that you will find a similar set of relationships in your life. |
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