When I was a young adult, going into the Communion time, the Pastor would ask us to search our heart for sin to confess so that we would be right with God.

In my self-righteousness, I had a hard time finding one.   The truth is, there are many—if we would search His Word.

Author Jerry Bridges shines a light on some of these sins in this convicting book, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate [aff].

Bridges starts his book talking about sin in general.  He realizes that this book could make many feel overwhelmed by their sin, and the point of the Bible and this book is not to dwell on the sin as much as it is to show the way to have victory over it.  So first he describes how bad sin is, and then the power and efficacy of the solution for sin.

After that, he delves into the individual sins:

• Ungodliness (from which he says many of the others flow)
• Anxiety and Frustration
• Unthankfulness
• Pride
• Selfishness
• Lack of Self Control
• Impatience and Irritability
• Anger
• Weeds of Anger
• Judgementalism
• Envy, Jealousy and Related Sins
• Sins of the Tongue
• Worldliness

Bridges goes in depth about what the sin is, where it’s found in the Bible, and part of what I like is that he actually illustrates what this looks like—often from his own life.  He admits his own failures, and while there are some sins where you wonder if he may be getting a bit to legalistic or detailed, he then shows how you can have victory, which is what I think’s important.

I highly recommend this book to every believer, if not because you agree totally with what he says, just so that it gets you back in the Word and considering the fact that you may not be as holy as you thought you were—and humility is a good thing.

I know that I needed it!