Have you ever screwed up? Do you care that you have failed? Do you remember the first time you did something wrong and it made your heart beat fast? Fear and guilt ran through you veins. And as the years went on you become accustomed to your failure, and that feeling of guilt left you and you became comfortable in failure. 

I did just that. I was a lover of myself. Over the years I became comfortable living for myself. It was so easy to do right, and look okay. But even in my doing right I had as much pride in myself as I did the love for God. As I look back over the first years of marriage I see that I was much more in my marriage for me than my wife. And for a time I was happy with that. 

Then one day the word of God grabbed my selfish heart. I read Psalms 51. And David asked God to blot out his transgressions. That’s very biblical language. But what does it mean? The word blot literally means destroy/annihilate. Destroy? It sounded so harsh. And what I saw was that I was treating my failure lightly. I was comfortable with “blot”, but not “destroy”. 

Was my attitude and desire for sin and failure in my life for my sin to be destroyed? No! I was comfortable with blot. It sounded soft and gentle. But destroy painted a picture of permanence in my mind. It seemed hard, but commited. So as I saw David’s heart in his demand to God to destroy his failure, it revealed my selfishness in wanting to define words gently. But sin required harsh treatment, it required a life. A perfect life. Jesus’ life. And my unwillingness to treat my sin harshly and permenantly showed I selfishly wanted to keep the sin in my life. Sure I said sorry. Sure I hoped God would “remember it no more”. But to ask God to destroy it changed my heart. 

As I continued to read and meditate I learned that the word “transgression” literally meant crime or law breaking. My mental picture of my sin had been too simple. I viewed my transgression as an accident or a tripping accross God’s line. I didn’t want to hear that my sin was no accident or tripping but a crime. That my failure was no small thing but that I broke the law and deserved a fine or ticket. But I treated my failure like getting caught for speeding and that I was trying to talk the officer into letting me out of my fine. But when Gods word revealed the depth of my crime and that the fine for any crime against Gods laws was death. This was serious. I wanted to treat my sin like a ticket, but not a death penalty. And by seeing how deep and sincere David had been moved to view his sin showed me that my attitude towards my sin needed to change. Big Time!

So now my selfishness that seemed so small was a death sentence. It wasn’t a speeding ticket. And I didn’t want my sin dealt with, I wanted it destroyed. I in no way profess perfection, but I do profess Gods word and a renewed desire for having a proper attitude towards my failure.