I have already commented on the inadequacy of trying to promote change by focusing only on obvious sin.  The struggle to endure pain and run the race without getting tangled up in sin is real work.  Moral discipline is required.

But more is involved.  The grime has been so imbedded in the carpet that a simple vacuuming will not do the job.  Working diligently to straighten up our actions without understanding either what it means to deeply repent or what it is that needs to be scrubbed away by repentance will make us more smug than penetrating.  We’ll pressure others to do right rather than draw them to want to do right…

We must find some way to work on the sin in our heart: that demanding spirit, that commitment to finding the happiness now that only Heaven will bring, that style of relating designed to protect us from the awful truth that we don’t have what we so desperately want…

We must repent of sin in the heart…

Inside Out, pge. 194, 195