Little joy, little conviction of sin.

For those Christians who think I talk TOO much about sin, who don’t like hearing so much about sin because they already SEE their sin everywhere and it’s depressing, I suggest that it’s only depressing IF a Christian is unsatisfied with Jesus and His imputed worthiness. Anytime you find yourself with little joy, you need MORE conviction of sin. But it’s pride in you that doesn’t want to see MORE sin in your life. Whyzat? You wanna believe you’re more wonderful than you really are. Whaddayado about that? You can ASK for the Spirit, claiming the promise of Luke 11, that if we ask, He’ll give us the Spirit — fresh conviction of sin. He who has a sense of having been forgiven only a little, loves only a little — Jesus, others, self, His genius plan for everyone’s life. Little sinners have little joy, because Jesus ain’t the big deal in our lives. Or our joy is fleeting and circumstance-dependent. But when we’ve been freshly convicted of BIGTIME sin, we are freshly self-aware, and freshly WOWED by a Savior who takes away our sin, which leaves us freshly GRATEFUL to be who we are, where we are, how we are. That’s when Jesus is ENOUGH for us. Joy is the litmus-paper test. Course, when you feel lousy physiologically, you ain’ta gonna have any joy — you’ll mainly wanna feel normal again.

— Dave McCarty, GospelFriendships, trying to promote Gospel-awareness, self-awareness, and sovereignty-awareness to Christians — especially DAVE, so Christians might have the other-worldly humility and other-worldly love compelling to seculars

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