Is it worth the wedge?

So I am away from the family for the weekend!  Not just a fun trip, although anytime my husband graciously takes over the healm and allows me to get away, it's fun...and relaxing...and a blessing!  However, this is a trip with a mission!  I am picking up writing the book I started earlier this year on the spiritual battle of adoption.  I am in an amazing home thanks to our friends Susan and Arnold Nall who have an empty house this weekend!  At this moment I am sitting on a fabulour orange "couch" - pretty sure that is NOT what you call it - while I type away.  I feel so pampered!

I had a five hour drive to get here.  That means five quiet, nobody screaming "mommy!", no fighting, no needs hours!  I had my phone loaded with praise music and podcasts! It was a little piece of heaven on earth!

As I drove and worshiped and prayed, God brought up a sin that I have struggled with for years.  I am a sinner, I know that full well!  I don't want this to come off like this is my "only" sin.  I know that I sin every day, but as a mature believer, I should not have deliberate sin.  Meaning, I shouldn't start to do something, hear the voice of God tell me not to do it, or just know already it is wrong, and do it anyway.  That is what I call deliberate, or willful sin.  This sin that God brought to mind was a willful sin.  But God didn't bring it up to condemn (there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1).  He brought it up to make me aware that the struggle over that sin is gone.  It is a sin that was a stronghold.  I had received deliverance before from the stronghold that resulted in this sin.  But I slipped back into the sin....lots of reasons why that I am not going to go into here.  But what God revealed to me today is that the sin is no longer a struggle becuase I know that when I took part in that action, it caused a separation between me and God (2 Corinthians 11:3, But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ).  Not a separation where I lost my salvation!  I don't earn my salvation, I can't lose it by sinning.  Goodness, then we all would lose our salvation every day!  That's not the separation I mean.  It's a loss of intimacy with God.  When John and I have a fight over something, there is a wedge between us.  We are still married, but the conflict between us makes it difficult to express our feelings to each other.  All analogies break down on some level, and I know God's love for us is constant and never changing, but when I am taking part in willful sin, I cannot have a sincere and pure devotion to Christ thus preventing the level of intimacy I can enjoy when I am walking in the light and not participting in deliberate sin!  God showed me that the reason my struggle over this sin is gone is becuase the level of intimacy I have with God in this season of my life is not worth risking for the temporary gratification of the sin!

Now, you may be going, "duh?!"  But here was the kicker for me.  I realized in that moment that obvilously my relationship with God, from my perspective, before was worth sacrificing for the immediate gratification of the sin.

It left me with this very interesting question: If we are not affected by the wedge sin puts between us and God, then is our relationship with God as intimate as we might think it is?

Just some food for thought.....