An inside job

I have been rereading an excellent book: The Enemy Within, Kris Lungaard's  masterful reworking of John Owens.  As it was 12 or so years ago when I first read it, it makes for excellent heart surgery.

Just this morning, I awoke after a restless night's sleep (or lack thereof.)  This is a hormonal and therapy issue, and I try to look at the non-sleep as a calling from God to pray.  But after wrestling all night towards such virtuous use of my time, I was a total grumpy-pants to my sweet husband this morning. When he gently called me on it, I was totally surprised.  That's because, as Kris puts it,

The law of sin doesn't work on us from the outside.  We carry it in us...It settles down with us and is at home...Indwelling sin doesn't observe a sabbath... Sin isn't just a permanent houseguest, it's a meddlesome wretch. It's always poking its nose in, looking over your shoulder, whispering in your ear...Sin does its dirty work with the greatest of ease...There is no spiritual duty, nothing godly you can set yourself to, in which you won't feel the wind of sin's resitance in your face...
~K. Lundgaard, The Enemy Within: Straight Talk about the Power and Defeat of Sin, Chapter 2.

We simply make peace with our sin, Gentle reader, until we don't even recognize it as sin anymore.

So I am praying that God would make me uncomfortable with my sin, until I have to stop cuddling it, and instead see it for what it is: cosmic betrayal.  I belong, as Kris and Dr. Owen say, in that ring of Dante's Inferno reserved for the traitors and betrayers.  But marvelous grace, instead I am raised to Paradisio, where God looks at me and sees His Son instead.  May we all live in the light of that glorious exchange, Gentle Reader. And may we wage war with that enemy within.