17
I cried out to him with my mouth; his praise was on my tongue. 18If I
had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; 19
but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. 20 Praise
be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me! Psalm
66:17-20 NIV
God
is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth John 4:24 NIV
One of the reasons pornography is so
dangerous is that it loads our minds with images of sex sin that will hang
around for years. The memories then
serve as potential temptations for us to think back on and fantasize about.
This is what the psalmist meant by cherishing sin in the heart.
When we cherish sins in our hearts it blocks our prayers and worship
because God commands us to worship him in spirit and in truth.
Since every sin involves some kind of lie, cherishing that sin violates
the truth requirement for worshipping God.
We’ve heard from many sex addicts who
feel like God is ignoring them and/or that their prayers don’t seem to be
working. They are equally
frustrated with trying to worship God. They
feel “spiritually dry” and a million miles from God.
In such cases, cherished sin may well be the culprit that is cutting them
off from God.
If we want to remove the
roadblocks on our prayers and get reconnected with God in worship, we’ll need
to arrest the cherished sin problem. Memories
of sex sin can be hard to remove from our minds, especially when we’ve gone
back repeatedly to lust over them. Dwelling on the memories actually
maintains the neural pathways that support them (ref: Mapping the Mind by
Rita Carter).
It makes sense, then, that
we’ll have to stop dwelling on the sin memories if we want to stop
cherishing them. This usually
takes time and discipline to carry out…perhaps even decades
(see thoughts).
Even so, it is possible to clear the memories from our daily
thoughts, such that we are not continually fighting to not think about them.
The Holy Spirit helps us do this (Romans
8:11,13).
We’ll also have to die
to our love for the sins we’ve been cherishing.
Peter mentioned: “He himself bore our sin in
his body on the tree that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by
his wounds, you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24 NIV).
Jesus died for us such that we could die to sins, live for righteousness
and receive healing. Part of that healing is available for our minds from the
memories and sinful thought patterns we’ve developed over the years.
We can ask God to help us die to our enjoyment of sin and help us see sin
the way he sees it. Again,
the Holy Spirit will be the agent that helps renew and heal our minds (Romans
12:2) as we follow Jesus each day. He
will teach us how to think as the new persons in Christ that we are.
Questions for further
thought:
Prayer:
"Dear
Lord, I pray that you will not remember the sins of my youth. Please think
of me according to Your mercy and for Your goodness' sake, O LORD. Lord I
turn from all of those sins that I committed. Please wash my memory of my
sin and help me remove the sin from my mind completely. Help me not to
return to those memories for lust any longer. Please restore me
to faithfully obey Your Word. Please fill me with Your Holy Spirit anew,
so that I may keep Your commands all the days of my life."
(Based on Psalm 25:7)
(more prayers on cherished sin)