S11.07 |The Danger of Getting Comfortable with Sin
Sin doesn’t always announce itself loudly—sometimes it slips in quietly and makes itself at home. Over time, we stop noticing it. We stop feeling convicted. We make peace with things God died to free us from.
In this episode of Affirming Truths, Christian Mental Health Coach Carla Arges talks about the subtle ways we normalize sin—like unforgiveness, what we consume, negative self-talk, gossip, and overworking—and how these compromises quietly hinder our healing.
Discover how to recognize where you’ve grown spiritually numb, why that’s dangerous for your relationship with God, and 3 practical steps you can take to return to freedom and wholeness in Christ.
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3 Key Takeaways from This Episode
✅ Small compromises have big consequences.
When we get comfortable with unforgiveness, toxic media, gossip, or striving for worth, our hearts slowly harden, and our ability to hear God’s voice diminishes.
✅ Hidden sin hinders healing.
You can’t walk fully free while clinging to things God has called you to release. Letting go isn’t about shame—it’s about making space for God’s peace, joy, and restoration.
✅ Holiness is both a gift and a pursuit.
Jesus made you holy by His blood, but He also calls you to live set apart. Partnering with Him in obedience brings deeper intimacy, clarity, and resilience.
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💻 Learn more and enroll at: carlaarges.podia.com/rooted-resilient
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Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
5 Tips for Overcoming a Negative Body Image
Who You Say I Am Biblical Affirmation Cards
TRANSCRIPT
Carla Arges: Hey, friends, welcome to episode 7 of Affirming Truths.
This episode today might feel a little uncomfortable. It may make you a little uneasy, but I want to encourage you to lean into what feels uncomfortable. Because I'm convinced that this discomfort is actually going to be a doorway to lead you to greater freedom.
The enemy doesn't always tempt us with big, obvious sins. More often than not, he gets us, as we walk this walk of faith, to slowly accept attitudes, habits, and compromises until we stop seeing them for what they are.
So we need to recognize the subtle ways we've normalized sin in our life. And we need to understand why staying spiritually alert is essential for a thriving relationship with God and a healed heart.
So many of you have come and found me in this podcast because you're walking through healing. You're wrestling through wounding. You're holding the tension of your faith and understanding your trauma. And while God doesn't punish us with mental illness, God doesn't punish us with trauma because of sin in our life, our sin can hinder our healing. And it could actually magnify the wounds.
And so it is so important that we understand, that we come into this with open eyes to see where we might be getting comfortable with sin. Right? And what does that mean? Like I said, getting comfortable with sin means when sinful thoughts, behaviors, or attitudes stop stirring conviction in us and start to feel just normal, just like an everyday part of life.
And we know that Jesus called this out and condemned it when we look at Revelation, when He's talking to all the different churches. The church in Laodicea—if I pronounce that correctly—He was chastising them for being a lukewarm church. Complacent, and unaware of their true condition. Let us not get complacent, and let us not normalize sin in our life and get comfortable with it.
So as we go through today's episode, I want you to have this reflection question in the back of your head: Are there any areas of my life where I've stopped asking, “Does this please God?”
Now again, the types of sin we normalize are not often the big sins. We don't normalize idolatry. We don't normalize murder. But do we maybe get a little bit comfortable with white lies? Do we maybe get a little bit comfortable with idols in our life?
I'm going to share with you five areas where we tend to normalize sin. But, guys, there's more. There's more than just these five. There's a million different ways that we can normalize sin. And again, what might be sinful in your life may not be sinful in someone else's.
So this is not going to be about judging how the Holy Spirit convicts one person, not the other. And what do I mean by that? For example, and I've shared this story in the past—during Covid, God called me to stop dying my hair. Why is dying your hair a sin? No. Was my hair and my appearance becoming an idol in my life that needed to be torn down? Yes. But it was normal. It's normal to dye your hair. Everybody does it. It's normal in the church. Great. But what was happening in my heart? What was the idol in my heart that God needed to address?
So keep that in mind, too.
But here are five examples of sin we normalize, and also a little indication of how they hinder our healing and our growth and our closeness with God.
The first one I want to go into is unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness, and that may sound like, “Oh, well, we know we're supposed to forgive. We don't normalize that.” But really—have you let bitterness get a hold of your heart? Do you justify holding on to hurt because the person that injured you never apologized? Do you justify holding on to hurt because what was done to you is just too big to forgive? Do you justify holding on to bitterness and resentment because what happened to you shouldn't have happened?
Here's the problem with justifying that—yes, they sinned, they sinned against me. Therefore I'm justified in my anger. Anger can be righteous, however, for a lot of us it's not righteous anger we're holding on to. It is bitterness, and the bitterness keeps us emotionally bound to the offense.
Do you hear me? Bitterness, which is the product of unforgiveness, keeps us emotionally bound to the offense. And it keeps us reliving the offense. It blocks the flow of God's peace.
We're told in Colossians 3:13, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Yes, that even means the horrible things. Yes, that even means the horrible people. It's easy to forgive the small stuff. It's easy to forgive little tiny things. But God is not just asking you to forgive the tiny—He's asking you to forgive everything.
And we get comfortable because we feel justified. We feel justified in our unforgiveness. And I want to remind you I'm not talking here about reconciliation. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. You can forgive, and it still not be the right time or place to reconcile. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what's grabbed hold of your heart. What have you become desensitized to?
The second sin we normalize is in what we consume—media, music, social feeds, and yes, even for some of us, food.
We binge shows, music, podcasts—and a lot of them normalize sexual immorality, gossip, fear. You know, it always surprises me when you look at how many people consume true crime podcasts, and then you look at how many of them have high anxiety or anxiety disorders. There's a high correlation.
Like, why are you into true crime? Why are you feeding your fears? Why are you feeding your anxieties?
I haven’t watched these shows myself, but I’ve heard, like The Outlanders and The Bridgertons, that normalize sexuality and have sexuality on screens.
I mean, how is the deposit of lust benefiting your marriage? How is it helping you to see your husband in the right light? How is being desensitized to bad language and sexuality feeding your Christlikeness?
You see, the constant exposure we give ourselves to messages that are contrary to God's truth actually rewires our thoughts and reinforces lies that trauma has told us.
We’re learning more and more about neuroscience. I happen to geek out about this topic because I love how neuroscience reflects the truth of God's Word—when God says to be transformed, how? By the renewing of our minds. Neuroscience has shown us how we can literally create new neural pathways. But what we're exposed to impacts what we think about, reinforcing the neural pathways of those thoughts that drive our feelings and ultimately become reflected in our behavior.
What are you consuming? Have you asked yourself lately about the shows you’re watching—how does this glorify God? What's God's opinion of me consuming this? How is this helping or hindering my wound and the healing that I want to do?
Another example of sin we normalize is negative self-talk.
Yes, how we speak to ourselves—in ways we'd never speak to our friends. Believing shame-based labels, talking down to ourselves. I do believe it is a form of sin, in that we are speaking to an image bearer of Christ poorly. We are speaking to a child of God poorly.
We are agreeing with the enemy's lies about our worth when we speak negatively over ourselves. We're coming into agreement with the enemy's lies. This keeps us from fully embracing our identity in Christ. And when we are not fully embraced in our identity in Christ, we're not fully walking in the plans and purposes He has for us either.
How can we, when we don't believe it to be true?
How we speak to ourselves matters. Are you speaking life over yourself, or are you speaking death over yourself? There’s power in the tongue—not just in how you speak to others, but how you speak to yourself.
Would you talk to yourself that way in the presence of God? Would you talk about your child the way you talk to yourself? What makes it okay to talk to yourself that way? What makes it okay to come into agreement with the enemy's lies?
We don't want to keep ourselves from fully embracing our identity in Christ. So we need to watch what we say.
Another example of sin we normalize is gossip and complaining.
We excuse it in so many ways—venting, sharing a prayer request, just “being concerned.” But that does not reflect the heart of God. Is it normal? Yes. Is it sin? Yes. Is it harmful? Yes.
It keeps our focus on problems and other people's faults, feeding a cycle of negativity rather than feeding the Spirit so that we can produce the fruits of the Spirit. What fruit are you producing when you gossip and complain? How are you impacting the people that you're gossiping and complaining with? Are you building them up, or are you participating in their downfall?
When you gossip and complain, are you reflecting the heart of Jesus?
What type of mentality are you reinforcing when you gossip and complain? I'll tell you right now—it’s a victim mentality. Has God created you to be a victim, or in Christ are you an overcomer?
Life and death is in the tongue, like the Word tells us. What are we speaking?
Another example of sin we normalize is overworking or striving for worth.
In North America, this is normal. Hustle culture. Grind. “Work hard, play hard.” We glorify busyness and treat rest as optional—or worse, we believe we have to earn rest.
But healing happens most in the rest. Why do you think after you get a medical procedure or injury, they want you to rest? That’s where healing and renewal happen. When we don’t create rest as a natural rhythm in our life, we disconnect from God’s rhythms of rest and restoration. That leads to burnout and emotional instability.
I see this a lot in the clients I work with—yes, there’s trauma, yes, maybe mental illness—but their constant triggers and small window of tolerance often come from a lack of rest.
Rest isn’t just sleep at night. Jesus modeled a rhythm of rest. He regularly stepped away to pray, to connect with the Father, to restore. It wasn’t just the Sabbath or nighttime—it was woven into His life.
When we glorify busyness, we discount God’s desire for us. Rest was so important to Him that He made it one of the Ten Commandments: “Keep the Sabbath day holy.” Even in the wilderness, when the Israelites had to collect food daily, God provided a double portion before the Sabbath so they could rest.
We worry that if we rest, there won’t be enough—enough time, enough money, enough success. But our enoughness comes from God, not our striving.
Overworking and striving for worth is a sin we’ve normalized. And it’s keeping many of us from healing.
It’s spiritually dangerous to normalize sin. It hinders the healing and growth we say we desire. Sin tolerated is sin multiplied—small compromises create footholds for the enemy. Hebrews 3:13 warns that sin’s deceit can harden our hearts.
When our hearts grow numb to sin, we lose spiritual sensitivity. We can’t hear God’s voice as clearly, and we stay bound when God came to set us free.
There are three steps to guard against spiritual numbness:
Seek the Holy Spirit daily for conviction. Ask Him to reveal any sin, thought, habit, or attitude that’s not pleasing to Him. Psalm 139 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
Stay rooted in God’s Word. Scripture is the mirror that shows what’s out of alignment and points us to our Savior.
Stay accountable. Be in community with believers who will lovingly point out blind spots and encourage righteous living.
The enemy is subtle. He’ll tempt you not with the “big sins,” but with compromises of the heart—things that erode holiness and build idols.
Here’s a prayer you can use:
“Lord, show me where I’ve made peace with something You died to free me from. Give me the courage, by Your Holy Spirit, to address it and walk in Your ways.”
My affirming truth for you today is: I will not settle for less than God’s best. I will live in the freedom and holiness Christ purchased for me.
My anchoring Scripture for you is Psalm 51:10 — “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
Thank you for joining me on today’s episode. If this resonated with you, I’d love to invite you into my group coaching program Rooted & Resilient, where we address not only the wounds of your past, but also the patterns and compromises you may have made peace with that are keeping you from living fully free. You can learn more and enroll at the link in the show notes.