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The Concentration of Personal Sin 7/3/07 |
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Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips . . . —Isaiah 6:5 |
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| When I come into the very presence
of God, I do not realize that I am a sinner in an indefinite sense, but I
suddenly realize and the focus of my attention is directed toward the
concentration of sin in a particular area of my life. A person will easily
say, "Oh yes, I know I am a sinner," but when he comes into the presence of
God he cannot get away with such a broad and indefinite statement. Our
conviction is focused on our specific sin, and we realize, as Isaiah did,
what we really are. This is always the sign that a person is in the presence
of God. There is never any vague sense of sin, but a focusing on the
concentration of sin in some specific, personal area of life. God begins by
convicting us of the very thing to which His Spirit has directed our mind’s
attention. If we will surrender, submitting to His conviction of that
particular sin, He will lead us down to where He can reveal the vast
underlying nature of sin. That is the way God always deals with us when we
are consciously aware of His presence. This experience of our attention being directed to our concentration of personal sin is true in everyone’s life, from the greatest of saints to the worst of sinners. When a person first begins climbing the ladder of experience, he might say, "I don’t know where I’ve gone wrong," but the Spirit of God will point out some definite and specific thing to him. The effect of Isaiah’s vision of the holiness of the Lord was the directing of his attention to the fact that he was "a man of unclean lips." "He touched my mouth with it, and said: ’Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged’ " ( Isaiah 6:7 ). The cleansing fire had to be applied where the sin had been concentrated. |