I Can't Stop Sinning

Do you feel stuck in sin even though you love God?

If you keep falling into the same habits, battling temptation, or feeling frustrated in your walk with Christ, you are not alone.

In this episode, we talk honestly about what it looks like to struggle with sin as a believer, why it happens, and how to begin breaking free through God’s grace, repentance, and daily surrender.

My prayer is that this episode brings you closer to Him, gives you hope, and reminds you that freedom is possible.

If this episode speaks to you, feel free to reach out or connect with me on social media. I’m praying for you always.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Janelle and Jesus. I am Janelle, and of course, we always have Jesus. If you are new here, hi, welcome. So excited to have you. Um, this is basically a channel where we get to talk about all the vulnerable stuff that happens and be raw and real with each other, right? Look at the things that we're facing in our everyday lives as Christians and talk through them, walk through them, read the scriptures together and figure out what is our next step forward. But I just pray that the Holy Spirit would speak to you through me and that you're able to hear my life experiences and see where I've come from and see what the Lord says about all of these topics and just really hear him and his voice. That's all I want. So without further ado, I guess let's just jump right in. If you click this video, you already know that we are talking about loving. You already have loved the Lord, you've accepted him into your life, but you are still for some reason stuck in these cycles. You are stuck in a cycle of sin, you are stuck in a cycle of depression, you are stuck in a cycle of who knows, but you just feel stuck. You feel like you cannot move on, you cannot be freed from these things. What should you do in order to move forward? Now, some of my creds for speaking about this. I feel like I say this in every video that I've posted so far, but I've known the Lord my whole life. I accepted him in fifth grade. I've served at church since then, and I worked at a church for two years, um, which is kind of where my story begins with this whole cycle thing. I was never like a huge partier. He didn't like radically take me out of, you know, like drug addiction or things like that that are like really intense. I've always I thank the Lord that I I have a quote unquote boring testimony, right? Um, but I did struggle with some things that they were hard. They were hard to figure out what was the issue. So I worked at a church for two years, and that's kind of where my story starts, I want to say. During those two years, I was in very high capacity roles. I was um in charge of the youth worship. I was on stage on the altar every weekend or every three weekends, you know, and then missing one a month. So I was a very like I was leading people, right? I was leading in high capacity, and yet I was still struggling a lot with my sin and with my my cycles, right? I was heavily in depression, I was riddled with anxiety, I was still partying a lot, I was in a relationship that just did not edify the Lord, and I was doing all of these things and no one would know because I was the same person, I wasn't the same person inside church as I was outside. I had you know some anger issues, all of these things, but inside of church, you would never know because I was presented as someone that was very put together, I was very um kind to everyone. I have a like a natural, like I'm a very bubbly person, so my personality would always come through. But when I'm alone in my room, that person's not there. You know, it's just me crying my eyes out and just feeling broken. And yet I would serve the Lord every day. It was my job to go to church and just be in his presence, right? Yet I lacked the presence. My job was to plan all of these things and seek the Lord, yet there was no seeking. I loved the Lord, but I didn't know him. I wouldn't put the time or the effort to spend with him. I would just do the motions, I guess. And that caught up to me bad. I would have panic attacks every time I would drive up to the church. Like I literally couldn't get out of my car because I would feel so incredibly weak. I felt like I would pass out every single time I was on the stage. I literally thought I was gonna pass out. Um, I had to even go off the stage in the middle of a song at some points because I didn't want to pass out in the middle of the song. It was just really intense and I didn't know what was wrong. I did I genuinely had no idea, but I knew that things weren't working, and I knew that the things that I were doing was doing was wrong because I had major conviction about it. The Lord would convict me and then I would ignore it. What? Just be like looking back on it, I'm like, Janelle, what? But it's it's real, right? I I want to be real and I want to be honest with you because I don't know what you're going through, but the Lord would convict me and He would tell me what I needed to change. And and I just I knew, like, you know, it's the classic Christian guilt of just like you shouldn't be drinking, you shouldn't be saying these things, you shouldn't be talking. And it's like, yeah, it's it's true, it's it's right, you know, but I didn't know how to stop it. And then I would just hear the classic modern Christian take on the gospel, which is like the Lord just wants you as you are, which is true, but he doesn't want you to stay as you are. That was what I was hearing. It's like you don't the Lord just He loves you. There's so much grace for you, no matter what you're going through. Like, just keep doing you, but like the Lord loves you. While the Lord does love you, He also tells us to turn from sin. He tells us to repent and turn, go about your way, sin no more. What Jesus did on that cross was a way out of our sin, not a reason to stay in it. He has freed us from sin. He we now have the ability to crucify our flesh alongside him and live in the spirit and sin no more. So this idea that the Lord wants us, because he has grace for us and loves us, he wants us to just sit in our sin is false. The Lord sat with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, all of these people that were broken and bruised, and he sat with them and he loved on them because he does love you. Nothing you will ever, ever, ever do will make the Lord love you less. Don't mishear me. I promise you, I'm not saying that because you live in sin, the Lord doesn't love you. That is false. You will do not feel shame or guilt, but you do get convicted. I talked about this in the last episode. The Lord convicts us because he wants more for us. There is a freedom that he offers, there is a true peace that he offers that cannot come if we are still sinning. Because every action that we do creates a fruit. And the fruit of living in the spirit is the fruits of the spirit. It's peace, love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control. But when we sin, the fruit of the sin is death. It is sin, right? Sin is death, it is separation from the Lord. So when we stay in our intentional sin, we end up feeling distanced from God because we're creating that distance. He cannot reside where we sin because he is light, he is perfect, he has made us holy and righteous. But that doesn't give us a license to just do whatever we want. I'm sorry. I know it sucks, but it doesn't. It doesn't give us a license to just keep sinning. When I started to kind of take hold of what was happening, which was a couple years later, I went through a rough, well, through a rough time. But as I started to get closer to the Lord, my sins started to fall away. I think our issue, and the the devil does such a good job at this, is that when we start to sin, or when we continue to sin, we feel the conviction, we feel broken, we feel dirty, and we want the Lord, right? But when we feel that way, the devil does such a good job at saying, But you're so dirty, you're disgusting. What you can't face the Lord like this. You can't face him. He was crucified for your sin, and here you are backstabbing him. You think you're gonna go to him now? And that is such a demonic lie. The Lord wants nothing more than for you to go to him just like that. We do not need to clean ourselves in order to be cleansed by the blood. The blood already does it, he covers a multitude of sins. We have such a pattern of saying, Lord, I am I am sinful, I am so sorry. And then we're so stuck in that that we we can't even look at him. We hesitate to reach for our Bible because we feel the distance. When I was doing these things, again, I was at church, I worked at a church, I lived, breathed, thought, slept church, and I did it for two years. But you know what I didn't do? I didn't eat, sleep, and breathe God. It was about the building and it was never about his presence. When I put serving in front of his presence, when I put singing in front of his presence, when I when I put all of these things, I noticed that I would give in to my fleshly desires because I was empty. I was empty. I was pouring from an empty cup. That's also why I wanted to pass out all the time, because as I was on that stage leading people in worship, where was I taking them? Because I didn't even know what worship looked like. When we sit in our when we sit in our sin, it just skyrockets, it it snowballs into this massive thing that we feel so far gone that the Lord can't redeem us. But he's the end the entire time, mid-sin, he's still looking at you and saying he loves you. He is still looking at you and saying, Child, turn to me. Would you just look at me? I could take this from you, I could take this weight from you, would you just look at me? But yet our guilt, our guilt just takes it. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. I can let me let me stop first. Let me stop doing what I'm doing first, and then I can go to you. And that's just so twisted, it's so backwards. The Lord wants the dirty version, he wants the version that is broken and bruised. You see it all throughout scripture and the gospels. The Lord uses the people that society has deemed unworthy to even be around. It's that's how dirty that they seem to society, and the Lord finds value in them. Those are the people that the Lord dines with, those are the people that he calls on, he calls them by name and he says, Child, you are mine. I'm so sorry. The Lord looks at them with such love, and you know what happens when the Lord looks at you with that love, all your shame is gone, everything just dissipates. When the Lord's love hits you, nothing else matters. So I have found that when I sit with him, and again, I've said this in other episodes, but if this is your first episode, how do you get closer to the Lord? You just sit. Don't come with an agenda. Don't say, I need to read five passages, I need to pray over this, this, and this circum circumstance, and then I have to go. Would you just come with no agenda and just sit in his presence and let him speak to you? My biggest prayer when I was going through that sin, when I was going through those situations, one, I took action. There's things that he wanted me to leave immediately, and I did. When the Lord is calling you out of something and you leave it, he will reward you for that obedience. So if he's calling you out of something, remove yourself immediately. And it's gonna be hard, but pray. Lord, keep me, guide me, use me, prune me, use me. Lord, search me, search me, search me. And would that never leave our lips? Would that prayer, Lord, search me and prune me? Would that never leave your prayer life? We are never a finished work until we get into heaven. There is always things that He is working on, He is pointing us out, He is growing you. He's not gonna remove everything at once, but the journey is worth it. The one that we embark on, it is worth it. So if you're stuck in sin right now, if you are stuck and you feel hopeless, I'm not asking you to drop your whole life. I'm just asking you to look at him. He's asking you to look at him. Because when we have revelation of who he is, he shows us who we are and how much more we deserve, how much more we are worthy of, and not by our own might. We do not deserve anything by our own might, we do not deserve anything out of our own worth. It is because he paid that price, he paid that price so that we were able to deserve these things. We are able to just sit in his glory, in his righteousness. Because we are a daughter and we are a son of the Most High God, and we are married to Him. John 15 5. I am divine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing. We can do nothing without him. Yet we try and do everything. It's in our nature. We try and do everything without him, but man, he is a source of life. If you are stuck in sin, you are not less than you are not a broken. God hears you, he sees you, and he loves you. But until you realize that you will stay stuck in that sin. He has given us the freedom to break free from it. When he says go and sin no more, it's not an impossible task anymore. But one, you have to acknowledge that you cannot live this cycle anymore. You need to be freed of your sin. So acknowledging it and abiding in him so that he may show you how to take it out. When you are in his presence, the more and more and more you will want to strip away the things that do not glorify him. I hope that all made sense. I feel like my brain is scrambled, but man, the Lord is just so faithful and he is so good. If you're struggling with something and you need prayer, please remember you are not alone. I am here. My DMs are open, my comments are open. Please, I beg you, put them into the comments or message me if you need prayer, and I will be interceding for you. You are not in this alone. Life is hard, but it's harder if we try to do it alone. That is why we are here. We are built for community. I love you guys. I thank you for watching this. I pray that the Holy Spirit spoke to you and that you were able to just feel his presence and listen to him. I love you guys so much, but Jesus loves you so much more. And I hope you realize that. I will see you guys in the next one.