why don't we talk about it

Today as I drove home from work, I was thinking about my life and how easy I am to think that I am doing ok. I so often forget that my heart is deceitfully wicked and that I am not saved by my works - isn't it easy to think that God loves you because of you? What a JOKE! anyway, I was thinking about this and I realized that one of the reasons that I think this is that I have names for all my sins - and I rarely use the name "sin" for any of them! I mean I am "unselfish", I am "lazy", I am "unloving", I am "ungodly" - but I don't say that I "sin"= that I worship other gods (myself) and that I run after other things for my significance completely ignoring the cross of Christ and the resurrection that frees me as if I am one raised from the dead!!! So why don't I call things like they are? Why don't I say that I am a sinner? Why do we not say "sin" often? - I mean when is the last time you said "I am sorry, it was wrong - it was a sin and I want to ask you to be gracious to me as a picture of God's forgiveness?" And when is the last time that someone said that to you? So I think it is because we still think that we are saved by our own spirituality - that is if we confess that we are sinners - active sinners - then we are losing something of a reward, or salvation itself! But this is not true! Jesus is the only reason we are saved - and He loves us even when we are sinners - and don't you think He sees it this way - I mean come on - you son't believe you are saved by works do you? He isn't fooled by my lables - And He so wants me to know that I am what I am by His grace and to live in that freedom - not searching for ways to hide my sin from others, look more spiritual and therfore be more important - and all of these things just laugh at the significance that Jesus has given to me on the cross! I certainly don't want to spit on the cross as if it is nothing to me - but that is how I act when I need someone to say that I am good and needed and important instead of letting my relationship with Jesus tell me this! So I have realized that my sin is a problem - and that I need to confess it to God daily -hourly- and live within my relationship that I have with Him to find all my worth - not shrinking from the opnions of others - because it is only when I live as if His opnion is the only one that matters that I truly live as one raised from the dead,in newness of life, as a slave to obedience! Rom 6 but I am learning that I only feel this way about Jesus when I really love Him - not just His precepts or His book but Him - the way I fell in love with David Miller reading his books - that is how I should fall in love with Jesus as I read about Him! more on that tomorrow!