HEART DIAGNOSIS

You sinned. You feel terrible. You're on your knees. "God, how could I do that? What is WRONG with me?" How could I. What's wrong with me. I'm such a failure. Every sentence starts with "I." Not one sentence about God. Not one sentence about who you sinned AGAINST. Just you, mourning you, because you fell short of who you thought you were. Pharaoh felt the same way. He begged Moses to remove the plagues. Wept. Relented. But the moment the pressure lifted — he hardened again. Because he never hated the sin. He hated the consequences. Are you sorry you sinned? Or sorry you're the kind of person who sins? One is repentance. The other is just pride, bleeding.

You do something generous for someone. A week later they let you down. And from nowhere: "After everything I did for you." Where did that come from? You never told them you were keeping count. But you were. Every favor, every sacrifice — filed. And the moment they disappointed you, the ledger opened. You weren't giving. You were lending. And you just called in the debt. That's why Jesus said don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Because the moment you're tracking it — it was never a gift. It was an invoice.

You pray differently when someone can hear you. Longer. More eloquent. Words you'd never use alone suddenly show up. But alone — five minutes. Distracted. Wandering. Can barely finish a sentence. The audience changed. And the prayer changed with it. So who was the prayer for? Because if the words get better when people are listening, the words were always for people. You weren't praying to God in front of them. You were performing for them in front of God. The Pharisees didn't pretend to pray. They actually prayed. Sincerely. Passionately. And none of it reached heaven.

"I'm just being honest." That's what you say right before you cut someone open. And maybe it IS true. But watch what happens after you say it. There's a flush. A small satisfaction. Not the satisfaction of helping someone. The satisfaction of standing over them. You didn't speak truth for their sake. You spoke truth because it felt good to say something they couldn't argue with. Your honesty was a weapon and "I'm just being honest" was the permission slip. Jesus called the Pharisees children of the father of lies. Not because they didn't know the truth — but because they used it to deceive.

You love learning. Books, podcasts, deep conversations. It feels noble. But what's the first thing you do when you learn something? You tell someone. You bring it up. "I was actually reading about this the other day..." You're not sharing knowledge. You're displaying it. The learning was never about the truth — it was about being seen as someone who knows things. That's why you're more excited to DISCUSS what you read than to APPLY it. Knowledge inflates. That's what Paul said. He didn't say it destroys. He said it puffs up. And inflated things are empty inside.

Prayer got answered. Crisis resolved. And your heart swelled with love for God. Beautiful. But trace the timeline. Did the love come before the blessing — or after? Because if it came after, you didn't fall in love with God. You fell in love with what He did for you. A dog feels the same way about the hand that feeds it. Satan made this accusation against Job. "Does Job serve God for nothing? Haven't you put a hedge around him?" Even the devil knew that bought love is worthless. Would you worship the God who didn't answer? That's where real love starts — or gets exposed.

Someone praises you. You deflect. "All glory to God." And you walk away feeling humble. But pride doesn't just hide behind your sins. It hides behind your GRACES. Your patience. Your gentleness. Your humility. Especially your humility. Because that's the last place you'd look for it. Pride in a sin is obvious. Pride wearing humility — that's a masterpiece. It's the one disguise nobody questions. Paul said "I am the chief of sinners." He wasn't performing brokenness. He was broken. The difference is everything.

Someone you care about is suffering. You feel something. You post about it. You tell people how broken you are. But broken for THEM — or broken for what their pain means about YOUR world? Because most grief is self-referential. You're not mourning their loss. You're mourning what their loss takes from you — their presence, their comfort, their opinion of you. And some grief is even simpler than that. You grieve because NOT grieving would make you look cold. The tears aren't for them. They're for your reputation. Jesus wept. No audience. No post. Just tears.

You see someone struggling. Your heart goes out to them. You want to help. But why does helping feel so good? Because compassion only flows downward. The helper is above. The helped is below. And your ego knows exactly which position it prefers. You're not being selfless. You're enjoying the view from above someone else's suffering. Paul said you can give away everything you own — even your body — and it profits you nothing. Because the whole time, the giving was about you.

You learned you're elect. Chosen before the foundation of the world. And something shifted. Not just peace — a sense of being special. Set apart. Not like them. Edwards wrote the most dangerous sentence in Reformed theology: "When this is the case with carnal men, their very lusts will make Christ seem lovely. Pride itself will prejudice them in favor of that which they call Christ." Your PRIDE can make you love Jesus. Not the real Jesus — but a Jesus shaped by your self-love. One who chose you above others. One who confirms how special you are. Edwards says the saint's affections begin with God's beauty. The hypocrite's begin with God's benefits to THEM. Same doctrine. Same Bible. Completely different hearts.

Someone compliments you. You wave it off. "No no — it was nothing." So they push harder. "No seriously, that was amazing." Now you've been praised twice. And the second one felt better. Because you were reluctant to accept it — which made it feel earned. The deflection forced them to insist. You ran a play and it worked perfectly. Here's how you know. If they had just said "okay" and moved on — you'd have been bothered. Not relieved. Bothered. You weren't being humble. You were fishing. And they bit.

You sinned again. The same sin. And something strange happened — you didn't just feel guilty. You felt a dark kind of comfort. A familiar settling in. "This is who I am. This is what I do." And here's what's terrifying: that resignation felt better than fighting. Because fighting means hoping. And hoping means you might fail again. So you stopped hoping. You made a home in the guilt because at least there, nothing can disappoint you. Dostoevsky called it the enjoyment of despair. You get so used to your own wretchedness that you start to prefer it — because it asks nothing of you.

Your prayers used to be long. Raw. Desperate. You'd pour yourself out. What happened? You grew in knowledge. You learned the doctrines. And slowly, without noticing, the prayers got shorter. More efficient. More theological. Less desperate. Owen saw this and named it: sin uses your own spiritual growth against you. The more you understand grace, the less urgently you feel you need it. You treat forgiveness like a medicine you've taken so many times you barely read the label anymore. That's why new believers pray like they're drowning and mature believers pray like they're filing paperwork. The desperation was the life in it. "I remember the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals." God doesn't miss your theology. He misses your desperation.

You realize you've been a hypocrite. And something clicks. You feel it — a wave of honesty. "I've been fake. I've been performing. I see it now." And that feels good. Really good. But why does it feel good? Because you just became the kind of person who's HONEST about their hypocrisy. And now that honesty is your new performance. You traded one mask for a more impressive one — the mask of self-awareness. Dostoevsky's Underground Man saw this: "I was lying. And the confession was also a lie." The honesty about your dishonesty is just another layer of dishonesty. There's no floor.

"I'll deal with it tomorrow." You've said that about the same sin for months. Maybe years. And it feels responsible. Like you're not ignoring it — you're scheduling it. But tomorrow is the most dangerous word in your vocabulary. Because it lets you keep the sin today in exchange for a promise you never intend to keep. Every "tomorrow" is a negotiation. And you're losing every time. Because sin doesn't need you to say yes. It just needs you to say not yet. "Not yet" is the most comfortable no one ever said to God.

It didn't start with the thing you're ashamed of. It started with something small. A glance. A thought you let sit for three seconds too long. "It's nothing." But sin never asks for the whole thing at once. It asks for an inch. Just consider it. Just look. Just this once. And because you never drew a line, you never noticed when you crossed one. That's the strategy. Sin gains more ground by inches than by assault — because a battle you'd notice. A slow drift, you won't. Nobody falls off a cliff. They walk there one step at a time, each one feeling like flat ground.

You had a genuine moment with someone. Real vulnerability. Real connection. And then you ruined it. Made a joke. Changed the subject. Pulled back. Maybe even picked a fight. Why? Because the genuine moment made you feel exposed. You showed something real and now it's out there and you can't control what they do with it. So you smashed it. Retroactively. Rewrote the moment in your head as something smaller than it was. "It wasn't that deep." It was that deep. You know it was. That's why you had to kill it. You'd rather destroy something real than let it exist outside your control. And you'll do it again tomorrow.