I recently attended a Bible study led by a woman named Miss Betty.
Miss Betty is the type of person who keeps you guessing. You never know where she’s going to take the conversation. She doesn’t follow a script and she’s proud of it.
So, when she suddenly declared in the middle of our Bible study “I’m a thief!” every eye in the room turned toward her.
At first, I thought that she was joking. But then Miss Betty told us about a time she went grocery shopping and accidentally left the store without paying for a pack of deodorant. She didn’t realize what had happened until she was loading her groceries into the back of her car.
The moment she saw the unpaid deodorant, she became hysterical.
Miss Betty ran back inside, hurried to the customer service desk, and tearfully confessed what had happened. She was crying so hard that the customer service representative had to calm her down and reassure her that everything was going to be okay.
Everyone in the Bible study laughed as we pictured the scene.
It was obvious to us that Miss Betty hadn’t intentionally stolen anything. She hadn’t hidden the deodorant in her purse or deliberately walked past the register without paying. She’d simply made a “mistake.”
But there was something that had initially caught my attention when she declared she was a thief. Miss Betty’s eyes began to water. And throughout the conversation, her emotions and feelings of shock, sadness, and despair were written all over her face.
While the rest of us saw humor in the situation, she felt genuinely troubled that she’d taken something that didn’t belong to her — even accidentally.
That made me stop and think.
I thought to myself, “What would it be like to be so sensitive to sin that even doing something wrong accidentally moved you emotionally?“
What would it be like to be so sensitive to sin that even doing something wrong accidentally moved you emotionally? #forsinglewomenonly Share on XDoes Your Sin Still Bother You?
It’s possible for your heart to become so cold and calloused that sin no longer bothers you.
Maybe lying has become so normal that you barely notice when you do it.
Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that taking something small doesn’t really count as stealing.
Maybe you’re frequently high or drunk because you don’t want to face what you’re feeling.
Maybe you’re sleeping with your boyfriend or fiancé and have stopped wrestling with what God says about sexual purity.
Maybe you regularly watch pornography, read dirty novels, or masturbate.
Maybe your struggle is gossip, bitterness, unforgiveness, jealousy, manipulation, pride, or something you’ve carefully hidden from everyone around you.
Whatever your vice is, you’ve practiced it for so long that you don’t feel bad about it anymore.
You don’t feel the internal conflict you once felt. You don’t immediately repent. You don’t ask God to help you change.
Instead, you defend it, minimize it, and rename it.
You compare yourself to someone doing something you consider worse or you tell yourself “it isn’t that bad.”
And little by little, your heart becomes less responsive to God.
The Bible warns, “Do not stifle the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19, NLT). It also tells you not to bring sorrow to the Holy Spirit through the way you live (Ephesians 4:30, NLT).
That doesn’t mean your actions can somehow make the Holy Spirit powerless. It means you can repeatedly resist God’s correction, ignore His prompting, and become increasingly insensitive to His voice.
The more often you silence conviction, the easier it becomes to continue doing what you know is wrong.
Conviction ≠ Condemnation
Now to be clear, this isn’t an invitation for you to live under constant shame.
Conviction and condemnation aren’t the same thing.
Condemnation tells you that you’re hopeless, disgusting, and beyond God’s mercy. It makes you want to hide from God.
Conviction identifies what’s wrong, how your sin separates you from God, and then draws you back to Him.
Condemnation tells you that you’re hopeless, disgusting, and beyond God’s mercy. Conviction identifies what’s wrong and then draws you back to God. #forsinglewomenonly Share on XScripture assures you that there’s no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). At the same time, God loves you enough to confront anything that’s damaging your relationship with Him.
When the Holy Spirit convicts you, He isn’t trying to destroy you. He’s calling you to repent, receive forgiveness, and change direction.
1 John 1:9 promises that when you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from wickedness.
So don’t run away from Him. Run to your Father.
You Aren’t Supposed to Stay Down
By the end of Miss Betty’s story, I wasn’t laughing anymore.
I found myself sobering up as I considered the sincerity of her response. As Miss Betty hammered into us numerous times during that conversation when some of the ladies suggested it was “just a mistake”, “sin is sin.”
- Yes, you’re human.
- Yes, you’ll make mistakes.
- Yes, you may struggle with certain temptations more than once.
But grace isn’t permission to become comfortable in the very thing Jesus died to free you from.
When you fall, you aren’t supposed to build a home on the ground.
You’re supposed to get back up.
You confess what happened. You receive God’s forgiveness. You remove whatever keeps pulling you backward. You seek accountability when necessary. Then you begin walking in the right direction again.
Grace isn’t permission to become comfortable in the very thing Jesus died to free you from. When you fall, you don't build a home on the ground. You get back up. #forsinglewomenonly Share on XYou may stumble, but you don’t surrender.
You may need help, but you don’t pretend there’s no problem.
You may have fallen repeatedly, but you don’t stop responding to God’s call to rise.
What Does God Need to Awaken in You?
Take a moment and honestly examine your heart.
- Where have you become too comfortable?
- What behavior do you immediately defend whenever someone challenges you?
- What did you once feel convicted about that no longer seems to bother you?
- What have you been calling a “struggle” even though you’ve stopped actively fighting it?
- Where do you need to get back up, wake up, or allow God to soften your heart so conviction can finally move you to act?
Ask Him to show you the truth, not so you can drown in shame, but so you can experience freedom.
Pray the words of Psalm 51:10: ask God to create a clean heart within you and renew a loyal spirit within you.
Let What Breaks God’s Heart Break Yours
Years ago, I heard a song that I never forgot: “What Breaks Your Heart” by Scott Krippayne.
“What breaks Your heart
What makes You cry
What would I see
If I looked through Your eyes
I want to grow closer and closer to You
‘Til what breaks Your heart
Will break mine too.”
This song expresses a desire to see through God’s eyes, understand what matters to Him, and grow tender toward what grieves Him. That’s the kind of heart you and I should desire.
Not a heart that’s crushed by shame.
Not a heart that believes every mistake separates you permanently from God.
But a soft, responsive heart that still cares when it has wandered away from Him.
Before you leave this page, ask God one direct question:
“Lord, what have I stopped allowing You to correct?”
Sit quietly and listen.
When He brings something to your attention, don’t make excuses. Don’t minimize it. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else.
Confess it. Remove access to it. Tell a trustworthy, spiritually mature person when accountability is needed. Then take one concrete step toward obedience today.
You don’t have to remain where you fell.
It’s time for you to get up.
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