Which Gives You More Anxiety? Your Misfortunes or Your Sins?

It's very normal for Christians to suffer from anxiety from misfortunes. Think of the Christian who is so happily driving his or her way to Sunday worship only to end up having a reckless driver ruin him. A Christian can get anxiety if the misfortune happens to be that somebody got his or her Bible was muddled either by an accident or by disrespectful people. A Christian can get anxiety if the person they are preaching to laughs at the Gospel. Those kinds of incidents would get any godly Christian to get anxiety. It's only normal to feel bad about the obstacles that Satan puts hoping to make the Christian ineffective.

But what makes the Christian get more anxiety is not the misfortunes but the sins they commit. Romans 7:14-25 reveals that Christians get anxiety from their sins too. Even the most mature believer is not perfected into sinless perfection and even the most immature Christian longs to be free from one's sin. It's indeed a test that you are on your way to perfection when your sins give you anxiety more than your misfortunes.

As I do my Bible reading, I would still remember how believers are so given anxiety by their sin whenever they fall into sin. When David willfully committed adultery with Bathsheba, he was so vexed by what he did that after Nathan rebuked him, he wrote Psalm 51 from his heart. When Solomon willfully had his other 999 pagan women added into his harem, he soon felt the anxiety of not serving God as wholeheartedly as his father evidenced when he wrote his repentance in Ecclesiastes. When Peter denied he was a Christian, the proof of his Christianity was when his sin gave him anxiety leading him to growing in godly repentance.

If a person is only given anxiety by misfortunes instead of their sins, I really want to say, "Are you sure that you are a Christian?" It's because if you are truly saved, your sins would give you more anxiety than your misfortunes.