S-I-N

What's that you say? Sin...oh that old fashioned word from the days of the modernist, scholastic and Christian era. Yeah, we're past that these days. Sin is an outdated and irrelevant term. We're not sinners these days - that's being preachy. Today we're learners. Today is all about experience and making sure your experience is good for you and not forced on anyone else. It's called tolerance - except for those that are not tolerant. Only one problem with all of that - it does not work! Just ask the victims of ISIS, or the hidden poverty in the West, or undocumented workers, those trapped in the sex slave trade or a hundred other examples of postmodern living that shows the brokenness of the world in all its infamy. If history teaches us anything it is that we are not learners, we are repeaters and that is what is captured by that word "sin". Personally, I prefer to talk about our brokenness these days, so why would I pray it in the Jesus prayer?

Here's why.

I am praying about sin in the Jesus prayer because that is what I am - a sinner. Please note, I said, "I AM". I am a sinner. I am broken. I am a failure. I have many ideals and goals, but fail to achieve many of them with any consistency. Sin is that ever present disease that hampers my every effort. This is where I think we have gone a little off the rails in Christendom. We seem to spend more time telling other people they are sinners, instead of starting with us. This is the very essence of Jesus' story of the man with a plank in his eye trying to remove a speck from someone else's eye (Matthew 7:1-5).

So, my praying the Jesus prayer is about my sin, my failures, my brokenness and the constant call to Jesus to rescue me from my own failures. It is not a judgement on others, but a judgement on myself. The wonderful thing about Jesus is that He pours on grace not condemnation. He pours on mercy, not punishment. He pours on love, not brokenness. And as Mathew 7:1 encourages, that is the judgement I want to pass on to others - the grace of God instead of the condemnation of sin, the mercy of God instead of the punishment of failure and the love of God instead of the brokenness of humanity. Grace, mercy and love.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.