This is exactly it. For a long time, I tried to “willpower” my way into that love, but I just kept falling back into the same cycle of “I stumbled, I failed.”
It’s easy to get caught in that loop where you feel hopeless because you can’t just “make” sin unappealing overnight. This is something I’ve struggled with for a long time and I still can sometimes.
But Jesus is so much more patient than we are.
Through true humility and coming to Him, He will never hold those stumbles against you.
The devil is a deceiver. He wants to make you feel irredeemable. Like every time you fail, God won’t accept you back.
But God says the opposite:
“The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”
Psalms 37:23-24 NIV
Don’t let the enemy lie to you. God loves you SO deeply, and when you start to really understand that love and return it, the enemy loses his grip on you.
God bless you guys :)
I’m starting to see that the gospel isn’t about forcing yourself to stop sinning, but about loving God so deeply that sin loses its appeal.