The Wages of Sin

I was recently on the phone with a precious woman from our Mountain Movers community. I’ll keep her name private. She had been radically delivered from a drug addiction, is now saved and faithfully joins our Wednesday night Zoom calls. But during a mentorship call with me, she shared something that genuinely surprised her.

She couldn’t cry.

As a new believer, she desperately wanted to repent deeply… but the tears wouldn’t come. Her grief over her sin felt muted, the sorrow that Scripture talks about just wasn’t there—and she didn’t understand why.

That conversation opened the door to a much bigger reality.

Patterns of sin—such as illegal drugs, prescription misuse, and even certain “so-called natural remedies”—aren’t merely about behavior; they’re about agreements. She became enslaved when she agreed with the drugs to numb pain, escape reality, and avoid deeper wounds rooted in trauma. Over time, those choices created what felt like emotional anesthesia—dulling her awareness of sin’s seriousness and ultimately suppressing healthy emotional expression through repentance.

That is why she couldn’t cry.

Emotional numbness is never the end of the story; those same agreements can open doors to far more destructive outcomes, such as:

1.   Learning disabilities and memory loss that make it difficult to read, comprehend, or retain the Word of God.

2.   Laziness and apathy resulting in diminished motivation, focus, discipline, and creativity.

3.   Poverty and financial instability stemming from poor stewardship of God’s resources—often including job loss, stalled careers, bad credit and even homelessness.

4.   Bondage and legal entanglements that can escalate into arrest, jail, or prison sentences.

5.   Enslavement to other addictions through an uncontrollable drive to continually satisfy additional cravings.

6.   Relational destruction caused by habitual lying, secrecy, and manipulation to conceal the addiction from loved ones.

7.   Codependency patterns that form through dysfunction, enabling behaviors, and emotional entanglement.

8.   Physical disease contracted through shared needles, pipes, and other drug equipment— including bloodborne infections, respiratory illness, organ damage, and long-term immune compromise.

9.   Fornication and sexual perversion fueled by lowered inhibitions, distorted judgment and spiritual vulnerability.

These outcomes are never isolated or confined to daily life. When sin replaces obedience and dependence on God, it becomes idolatry—blinding people to the spiritual destruction left behind when it goes unrepented of: crushing guilt, self-hatred, hardened hearts, and a growing inability to receive God’s love, grace, and mercy.

This is why simply standing in front of a mirror and reciting Scripture—“Jesus became a curse for me”—while absolutely true—will not, by itself, dismantle every door repeated sin has opened. It is also why addiction patterns—especially long-term drug use—so often require deeper layers of repentance and spiritual untangling before real freedom takes hold.

If I can share a bit of my own story: while I was never addicted, I did experiment with drugs in my college years—marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine. After I became born again, the enemy whispered, That was years ago. You’re saved now. Lacking real understanding of the wisdom found in scripture, I believed those lies far too long, and they delayed my repentance—which ultimately delayed my freedom.

As I renewed my mind through Scripture (Romans 12:1-2), the Lord showed me that although I was fully forgiven and justified, the consequences of my past sin had quietly eroded multiple areas of my life—my relationships, my finances, my intimacy with God, and my fruitfulness. That realization is exactly why I push back so hard against what I call wine-cooler Christianity—a watered-down gospel that shrugs at compromise and says, That all happened before I was a Christian, while quietly keeping people bound and unfulfilled.

Freedom begins with repentance.

In His mercy, God continued to use His Word—especially the story of the woman at the well—to lead me into lasting freedom. In that encounter, Jesus lovingly exposed the patterns sabotaging her life: sexual immorality, repeated broken relationships, codependency, and shame. He revealed them not to condemn her, but to heal and deliver her. Then she did something profound—she owned her story. She accepted responsibility for her choices. She ran back to her village declaring; “Come, see a Man who told me everything I EVER DID.” And Scripture shows she walked away changed—cleansed, restored, and free.

James 4:5–9 (AMP) lays this out clearly. It calls for sorrow, humility, cleansing, and turning away from sin—not to live in shame, but to fully sever ties with the agreements that invited bondage in the first place.

That is the kind of heart God is forming in this hour.

He is raising up a Bride who is repentant, surrendered, and awake. A Bride who has not only cut ties with former masters, but who is continually making herself ready by confronting every lingering impurity from seasons when another voice ruled her life.

Freedom is about honesty.

It’s about getting into the secret place and allowing the Holy Spirit to search what we have avoided, excused, or minimized—not because God is angry, but because He loves us too much to leave us bound.

That kind of honesty produces real repentance.
Real repentance produces real freedom.
And real freedom restores lives from the inside out—with fruit that proves it.