I find that as a Christian, I can sometimes so enjoy my sin, that I want anything but to be in the presence of God. Consequently, I avoid God.
In those times, I elude facing the blazing light of God's purity and truth. I know that there, as I pray, I will inevitably see my sin as sins, rather than just part of who I am. My view of them changed, I have a decision to make. I will either cling to the sin or I'll have to renounce it, accept God's view of it as wrong, death-dealing, and then leave it behind.
At other times, I shy away from God's presence because I simply feel unworthy as an unholy man to be in the presence of holy God. Like Simon Peter, who witnessed a miraculous sign of Jesus' divinity, I say, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" (Luke 5:8) "Look at someone else," I think, "I can't bear Your gaze!"
But God is an incessant lover. He isn't so easily turned away.
Out of His great love for us, He sent Christ into the world to die and rise for us.
From that same love, He sends His Holy Spirit now to hound us, to confront us with the reality that we live in the condition of sin with a tendency to violate His will for as long as we draw birth on this doomed planet, and that the only cure is the forgiveness and new life that Jesus Christ alone--the Way, and the Truth, and the Life--gives to those who repent and believe in Him.
Prayer: God, give me the courage to come into Your presence, to unflinchingly confess my sins, which become so clear when I am with You, and to gladly and gratefully receive Your forgiveness given only in Jesus Christ that we might be reconciled. In Jesus' Name, the only Name given among mortals by which we can be saved from sin and death, I ask these things. Amen
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