Will it Help If I Try to Turn Away from Sin?

Short Version Answer

Yes. But first let me help you gain some clarity about the issue. It is not as important to know what to turn away from, as it is to know whom to turn towards. That person is Jesus. Make Him the focus. Doing that gives you power.

God wants us to sin less because doing so is in both our best interest and His.

Think of these promises as the primary reasons for turning away from the things that hold you back: It helps bring God's presence and accompanying power so you can experience a life of more profound meaning and purpose. It leads you to greater heights of well-being.

Taking your mind off of sinning and putting it on Jesus will protect you from many hurts to which sinning opens the door. It will lead to great wisdom and the love of God.

Life has its difficulties, whether you learn the secrets of turning to Jesus or not. Turning towards Him will help you exert leadership over the temptations and effects of sinning. You get to understand what it means to have the upper hand over your decisions with God's help.

Turning to Jesus can only be accomplished with faith. If you think something you are doing is a sin, turn your eyes away from it, and turn them toward Jesus.

If you are not sure, turn your eyes on Jesus. If you are sure what you are doing is not a sin, turn your eyes toward Jesus anyway! It has much greater benefit than just turning away from sin.

When you put your attention on Jesus, regardless of how you feel, He is very real and spiritually present. Draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you. He will generously give you wisdom from above, and perfect peace. These are literally promises from the Bible to believers who affix their inner attention onto Jesus.

Although it is not AS important to know what you are turning from, it is vital to identify and admit the sins and setbacks in your life as you turn from them. This is a freeing thing. It helps believers feel clean, and forgiven.

Before a person first decides to believe in Jesus as their Savior, there may be some things they need to turn away from. This indicates a general sincerity in wanting to be saved, knowing that God will both forgive their sins and help them overcome sin's power in daily life.

Long Version Answer

There is a word for turning away from sin and turning toward God when doing so is a very positive thing. For over five millenia, it was well understood. In the last 80 years or so, the true meaning was removed in our society and obscured with a false understanding and negative connotation. In modern terms, it was given a "bad rap". That word is to “repent”. The noun form is "repentance". We still use these words today among believers because (1) they are in the Bible and (2) they are easier to say than "turning away from sin and turning toward God.''

Repentance is easier than you think especially when you first believe in Jesus as your Savior. In fact, just by believing for the first time, you have just repented from not believing in Him as your Savior. That is how easy repentance can be.

This is a profound concept. Stop and think about it for a moment. Believing in Jesus to become saved is not only an act of faith but even if you don't notice, it is also an automatic simultaneous act of repentance. Many people are unaware of this when they first believe, but it is true.

You don't need to do anything more than have faith in Jesus as your Savior to be saved. When you do, repentance from unbelief in Jesus occurs. And repentance from unbelief is the greatest act of repentance you will ever benefit from.

As we delve into this topic, please keep in mind that the many tips below on how to use repentance assume the reader is already a believer. So if you can't relate to the suggestions now, consider that they may be of great benefit for you later.

Repentance is our friend. As we practice it, we find ourselves starting to become repeat-repenters, rather than repeat-offenders. This is a good thing, especially if it arises out of our love and thankfulness toward Jesus. He blesses our lives more and more as we turn toward Him in repentance.

Isaiah the prophet wrote: "The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel has said this,''In repentance and rest you will be saved, In quietness and trust is your strength''.

Note the benefits of repentance, rest, quietness, and trust. They are: 'salvation' and 'strength'.

Repentance is sometimes translated "returning". It is probably also a good synonym for believers today who have put too much distance between themselves and God. Repentance restores relationship with Him. It is a re-uniting, a reconciliation

Turning or returning to God can be done without letting a sense of guilt or shame hinder you. There is nothing wrong with feeling remorse or sorrow about your actions, especially when it leads you to turn to Jesus. Remorse will eventually fade in the knowledge that Jesus paid the penalty for your sins, and you won't need to carry them any longer.

Ask for forgiveness, and then receive it with faith. When you do you are agreeing with God's pronouncement of forgiveness over your life. It removes feelings of shame. This is the exact opposite of being guilt-tripped.

Repentance is our friend. As we practice it, we become better at it. We tend to become repeat-repenters, rather than repeat-offenders. This is a good thing, especially if it arises out of our love and thankfulness toward Him. He blesses our lives more and more as we turn toward Him in repentance.

Just as you are, turn to Jesus. He will accept you just as you are. So accept Him just as He is.

If you are not yet a believer, and you can't relate to the suggestions below now, consider that they may be of great benefit for you later.

Sorrow is perfectly appropriate, when done right. The apostle Paul wrote: ''I rejoice now, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful in a way that led to repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces the opposite, leading to death." -2 Corinthians 7:9-11

What Does it Mean to Sin?

To sin, used as a verb in the New Testament, literally means to behave in a way that is off-target, like when an archer is aiming for the center of a target and shoots a stray arrow off to the side.

The picture of an archer missing a target implies someone who might want to shoot straight but doesn’t. That implication is a clue to how we should picture God. In His wisdom and love for us at times when we struggle with sin, He calls it missing the target. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He can see the good He designed into us even when we can't.

Our sins might be either unintentional mistakes or intentional misdeeds that we somehow mentally justify. They could even be intentional wickedness from our heart out of an evil motivation.

God is never surprised or shocked by any of our sins. He has seen it all many millions of times. When a believer turns from one or more sin, God's stance is to forgive the believer, forgive the sins, and cleanse the believer from the sins.

The blanket prayer, ''I turn from all my sins to You, Lord'' is fine, but not as effective as, starting with ''Lord, I turn from my sin of hatred against my boss, and I ask You for forgiveness and the power to stop thinking those angry thoughts.''

You can keep going and do the same with any other specific sins you want to ask forgiveness for. Confess your sins directly to God with specificity and remorse, and then watch God work beauty into your life as a result.

God does not ask you or me to do the impossible by cleaning ourselves up. Of course, it helps for us to cooperate with Him as He cleans us up. He wants to help believers hit ''bulls-eyes'' in the targets of life.

What good has sin ever done for this planet? Most of humanity's problems can be traced back to people sinning.

A sin or act of evil can cause a chain reaction that hurts many people, who in turn hurt a lot more people. Even when we think nobody is getting hurt, we don't often realize that we who sin are the people getting hurt the most.

Sin can have a rippling effect that comes back, like a boomerang, to bong us on the head sooner or later.

Jesus carried our sins to the cross, so we would not have to carry them into heaven.

There is no tipping point on the scale of sin. There is no amount of good works that earn your entrance to Heaven, and there is no amount of sins that can disqualify you from entering.

Jesus decrees that someone who believes in Him as Savior qualifies, regardless of how unforgivable others think the sins are.

In our natural strength, we cannot become free of sin. With His strength, we are given power to humble ourselves, confess our sins to God, and step away from them.

God is not a strict parent, unwilling to accept us until we become better people. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

God uses His power in love, not parental control. He is really much more powerful than any parent and has no desire to punish His children who love Him. At the same time, a parent who loves their child, will correct the child purely out of love. The child rarely enjoys this.

The Bible says ''Those God loves, he also chastens''. This is not pleasant, but is better than even good and loving human parents do.

In biblical terms, Jesus' message was ''Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand (or in your midst) ". Repentance is a must, but not a condition, for earning your salvation. Believing is the only condition to accepting the free gift of eternal life.

We All Know How To Repent

All not-yet-believers have learned the mechanics of how to repent in a natural sense. We have each used those mechanics thousands of times.

When we were learning how to talk, we realized we were saying words wrong, and then learned how to start saying them right. Each time we learned from our mistakes in life and made a course correction, we were 'repenting' in the natural.

When we learned better skills, we were 'repenting'. We were turning away from the thing that didn't work, and turning towards the thing that worked. Nobody can claim they don't know how to repent.

Unbelievers can be very good people in societal terms. They became as good as they are by 'repenting' in the natural from doing bad things or avoiding them. A form of repentance that left God out of the picture became comfortable.

The thing that makes repentance spiritual, is when we put God into the picture, turn to Him, and want to please Him. The Christian view of repentance is also to do so out of thankfulness for all that Jesus did to save and change our lives, as well as how much He loves us.

People often bemoan the state of today’s society. If we want things to get better in this world, we must take seriously that sin is a major cause of the world’s ills - also that repentance from sin is the most direct prevention and cure for those ills.

The best way is to start by repenting ourselves. I have found the more I turn my attention away from sinning and turn toward Jesus, the smoother my life works out in the final analysis. It seems like heaven is breaking into my life, and is close to my heart.

Many times I have heard discussions about what is the worst sin. Is it murder, genocide, stealing? It does not take a genius to comprehend that refusing to believe in Jesus as Savior could be considered the worst and most dangerous sin on the planet. It is the sin that unchecked leads away from heaven.

Paul the apostle wrote to Timothy the pastor, and gave a phrase that I have found to be encouraging. It is "God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth ".

Repentance is not fully the work of a person struggling with sin. When I get stuck in my ability to repent, I ask God to grant me repentance. Then I believe that He will add His power to my ability to repent.

The quote above, in a larger context, was Paul telling Timothy to correct ''those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.'' 2 Tim 2:24-26

Is God Angry at Me for My Sins?

Some people miss out because they get confused between the two concepts: “Jesus doesn’t like people to sin”, and “Jesus doesn’t like people who sin”.

When we say, “Jesus doesn’t like people to sin”, it is more like saying that a mother doesn’t like her baby to get hurt. The baby might be naively pursuing fun that is dangerous to self or others.

Jesus definitely likes people who sin. Sin will never stop Jesus from liking you, even if you hate Him.

God does not withhold His love from His children as a punishment for misbehaving.

Repenting from disbelief opens the door to being saved by Jesus. Once we believe, God will carry us through the rest of the journey.

We hear too much about God being angry over our sins. More often that not, our concept of "angry" doesn't apply. He is angry not with the person, but with the damage natarually inflicted on the person as a result of their choice to sin.

Imagine a sin you are tempted to do as if it was an enemy with intent to harm you. You can repel the sin with that mindset, and live a happier life.

Human anger can have some sin mixed into it. God's anger does not. Instead, it has pure love mixed in.

In nearly all cases, there is no need to interpret anything but love from Him and therefore feel love for Him.

In the New Testament Jesus displayed anger only toward sin, not the people sinning. His anger was an expression of His deep grief about somebody being hurt, or prevented from being helped.

In Mark 3:1-6, He had an angry facial expression as He looked around at His accusers. The ''angry look'' was followed by His action to heal a man the religious leaders did not want Him to heal.

It is not necessary to equate the angry look with personal ill feelings against the leaders. It is just as likely his scorn was a reaction to the darkness and deception to which they had succombed.

Jesus did use His rightful divine authority to drive the dishonest money changers from the temple, but the passages never mention anger.

God knows that sin is pleasant for a while. But it eventually damages either us, or other people He loves, or both. He is being kind to people by not liking them to sin.

To sin habitually is to produce a self-made setback. It means turning down God’s best for us and refusing His help to make our lives more wonderful.

How should we respond to such a setback? Not by hating ourselves for sinning. Not by feeling we let God down. Instead by turning to Jesus with love for Him and His ways.

God is worthy to be trusted, even when we think He is taking our favorite things or sins away from us. I can attest that He will replace them with something better if we keep trusting Him.

Pray that God would grant you the ability to make a conscious choice to prefer Jesus over sinning, and help you take a humble child-like stance toward Him.

God exudes the desire that His children will have well-being, contentment, and peace in their long, happy lives. All this takes place in the context of a loving relationship with Him by faith, that naturally leads to greater and greater victory over the sins in our lives.

The more we comprehend what Jesus did for us, the less appealing it becomes to ''miss the target'' in everyday life.

The Bible talks about the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom and understanding. That kind of fear is the kind that elevates God to His rightful place as King over everything.

He is a benevolent king, and one to emulate, not run from. He is a very good Father. As His daughter or son, each believer is a beloved child to Him.

The apostle John promised that if we confess our sins, God would forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God promised that if we ask from wisdom from above, He will always generously fulfill the request.

God's promises have power and light, whereas sin is based on lies. Sometimes sin-issues make us blind to the love and mercy of Jesus. God is our eternal friend and improves our lives as we trust Him to do so.

Jesus died for the worst sins imaginable and the least sins as well. Similarly, repentance is a powerful ally to us in how we respond to both little and big sins.

We would be wise to repent of every sin, whether we consider it small or large. The seemingly insignificant sins repeated over time can do as much damage or more as a single big sin happening once. This applies to damage against ourselves as well as others.

Our society, with good intentions, tends to call some sins very bad, others mild, and still others nothing more than "issues" that are socially acceptable. The danger in doing this is that in reality God, not society, determines the magnitude of a sin.

Even if a sin has a tendency to make us feel separated from Jesus, He never leaves us or stops loving us. Jesus died to remove separation from God, and it is the power of His death and resurrection, applied to us, that reconciles us to God.

There is no such thing as a sin that is too shameful for God to forgive. Nor is there a sin that is too horrendous that we should not release the thought and memory of it to God.

There is never a good reason to hide our faces from Jesus. He wants to have us close to Him in loving relationship. When we are, His power makes it just as if we had never sinned.

We can return to Jesus after falling or sinning innumerable times, and He never gets fed up. He keeps wiping away the power of sin from our hearts so we can commune with Him once again in a love relationship.

The apostle Paul said we are saved by grace, through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God. Grace is God's love and favor to us. We don't deserve it, we don't merit it, but He gives us salvation anyway.

Jesus lets us off "Scott free". The Bible says, "as far as the east is from the west, so distantly has He removed our sins from us."

Sometimes the word "sin" is used as a noun, meaning a condition of having a tendency to sin. That meaning applies to everyone, and we should not be in denial of it. We are all "sinners", in that sense.

In ourselves, we fall short of God's best for us. In this physical life, it is good to adopt the saying, "He who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall." We will always be susceptible in this lifetime to sin. That is why we should focus on Jesus even when we aren't sinning.

There is a hymn that says "Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

I have prayed many times that God would by His power reduce my sinful self-promptings and increase God-given righteousness in me.

It is healthier to stop focusing on sin itself in an attempt to get it out of your life.

The apostle Peter wrote, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

In context, the promise was that Jesus will someday return for a fully grown body of believers. Peter reminded us it is a promise, and God keeps His promises. But He is patient as He watches it take place over time.

God is NOT WILLING that any should go to Hell, but that all should come to repentance. God will go to extremes to help get this good message to the ends of the earth. He wants as many people as possible to turn away from their sins and toward Him, to believe and enter His kingdom of love.

Going to Hell is not what God wants for you. It is not His will for your life! Be quick to agree with His will: Let Him save you. Turn to Him.

Or, you can get to the Accessibility Menu here.