Back in My Right Mind

“Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” — Romans 2:4

Being in sexual sin can warp your thinking.

The longer you remain in it, the easier it becomes to start justifying what you know does not align with God’s Word.

We’re planning to get married.

We love each other.

God knows my heart.

I have needs.

We find ways to make our desires sound reasonable because sin has a way of convincing us that what we want should matter more than what God has said.

But love does not make disobedience holy.

Future marriage does not make present sin acceptable.

And having a desire does not give us permission to satisfy it outside of God’s design.

Sin will have you negotiating with standards God never asked you to negotiate.

It will have you searching for loopholes instead of surrendering.

And if we remain there long enough, what once convicted us can begin to feel normal.

That is why Romans 12:2 tells us:

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

Sometimes before God changes our behavior, He has to straighten out our thinking.

When I made the decision to practice abstinence, there was something I would constantly say to the Lord:

Thank You for not dismissing me from Your loving care because I continued to struggle with sin.

Because He could have.

Jesus could have allowed me to continue walking farther and farther away from Him.

He could have allowed me to die while still living in rebellion.

But He didn’t.

He gave me time.

Time to recognize what I was doing.

Time to repent.

Time to surrender.

Time to be restored.

And now He has given me the opportunity to testify to others about the power of surrender.

When I think about the things the Lord protected me from while I was in sexual sin, I become emotional.

There were consequences that could have followed some of my decisions for the rest of my life.

But even while I was outside of His will, His mercy was still surrounding me.

He protected me from contracting an incurable sexually transmitted disease.

He protected me from pregnancies I was not prepared for.

He protected me from situations I probably do not even know He protected me from.

Please understand: God’s protection was never permission for my sin.

His mercy did not mean He approved of what I was doing.

It meant He was giving me another opportunity to come home.

That is the beauty of our Father.

Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. After wasting what his father had given him and finding himself in a place he never imagined he would be, Scripture says something powerful:

“But when he came to himself…” — Luke 15:17

In other words, he came back to his right mind.

That is what sin can do.

It can take you so far from yourself that disobedience begins to make sense.

You can know God, love God, attend church, worship, pray—and still find yourself trying to justify something He has clearly told you to surrender.

But eventually, by the grace of God, you come to yourself.

You look around and realize:

What am I doing here?

Why am I settling for this?

Why am I choosing temporary gratification over intimacy with God?

And then you make the decision to go home.

What I love most about the prodigal son’s story is that when he returned, his father did not stand at the door reciting everything he had done wrong.

He ran toward him.

He embraced him.

He restored him.

He reminded him that he was still a son.

That is what Jesus did for me.

He did not continually remind me of what I had done.

He reminded me of who I am.

He reminded me that I am redeemed.

Chosen.

Forgiven.

Loved.

His.

And He reminded me that my story was not over.

Sexual sin may have been part of my story, but it did not get to determine the ending.

Now when I think about surrendering my body to God, I think about Romans 12:1:

“Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

God gave us His Son.

Jesus gave us His life.

It is only right that we give Him our bodies.

Because our bodies belong to the One who created them, and sex is too valuable to be separated from the boundaries He established for it.

Abstinence became more than simply saying no to sex.

It became my way of saying yes to Jesus.

Yes to obedience.

Yes to holiness.

Yes to healing.

Yes to clarity.

Yes to trusting that whatever God asks me to surrender will never compare to what He has prepared for me through obedience.

And today, when I look back over my life, I can only say:

Thank You, Jesus.

Thank You for not dismissing me.

Thank You for being patient with me when I was stubborn.

Thank You for protecting me even when I was not protecting myself.

Thank You for loving me enough to convict me instead of allowing me to become comfortable in sin.

Thank You for waiting for me to come back to my right mind.

And thank You for welcoming me home.

If you are struggling with sexual sin today, do not confuse conviction with rejection.

Jesus is not standing over you waiting to shame you.

He is calling you out because He loves you too much to leave you where you are.

Come back to your right mind.

Come back to obedience.

Come back to surrender.

Come home.

Your desires do not have to rule you.

Your past does not have to define you.

And your sin does not have to be the end of your story.