Woe Is Me: What Conviction Taught Me About Truth, Forgiveness, and False Teaching

This past week, something broke in me—and thank God it did.

I had what I can only describe as an Isaiah moment.
Not a gentle revelation. A full-on collapse of the pride I didn’t know I was standing on.

This past week, something broke in me—and thank God it did. This past week, something broke in me—and thank God it did.

I had what I can only describe as an Isaiah moment.
Not a gentle revelation. A full-on collapse of the pride I didn’t know I was standing on.

“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.” —Isaiah 6:5 (NKJV)

I Thought I Was Solid

For a long time, I believed something that sounded spiritual.
I believed that because Jesus paid for all sin—past, present, and future—I couldn’t sin anymore.
That grace had made me incapable of sinning.
That if someone still identified sin in their life, they just didn’t understand the finished work of the cross.

It sounded holy.
It sounded deep.
It was a lie.

The truth?
Jesus paid the price, but sin is still sin.
Grace doesn’t make us immune to sin—it gives us the power to repent of it without shame.
But I didn’t see that.

Instead, I let that false belief make me numb.
Especially to one of the most dangerous sins of all: unforgiveness.

Offended, Avoidant, and Spiritually Stuck

I had been hurt—by a church leader, by people close to me, by my ex-husband, by my own mother.
And rather than bring it to the Lord and truly forgive, I labeled it “boundaries” and moved on.
At least, that’s what I told myself.

What I was really doing was avoiding.
And avoidance isn’t healing.
Unforgiveness isn’t strength.
It’s sin.

That sin—left unchecked—grew into pride, bitterness, and self-righteousness.
And here’s the terrifying part:
Because I was convinced I couldn’t sin, I didn’t even recognize how far off I was.

Wolves in Sheepskin and the Danger of "Almost" Truth

I now know how easy it is to get swept up in man-made doctrine.
I was drawn to teaching that made sense to my emotions, that validated my wounds, and that gave me a sense of spiritual superiority.

But Scripture warns us:

“Let both grow together until the harvest…”

“The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness…” —Matthew 13:30, 41

The wheat and the tares look the same.
The sons of darkness and the sons of light grow side by side.

Discernment is vital right now.
Not everything that sounds like truth is truth.
A half-truth will still lead you to hell.
I say that with tears, not pride.

I was led astray because I stopped testing everything against the Word of God.
And worse—I thought I was Job, suffering because I was righteous.

But God showed me the truth:
I wasn’t Job.
I was filthy. Self-righteous. Emotionally driven. Easily manipulated because I thought my feelings were valid above correction.

And in His mercy, He let me see myself clearly.

conviction hit

I couldn’t stay comfortable anymore.

I wept.
I dropped to my knees and surrendered.
And then I acted—I sought reconciliation, I confessed the lies I had believed, and I repented.

Not to feel “better.”
But because I was wrong.

And repentance—true repentance—brought me back to my Father.

Your Pain Can Become a Weapon

Here’s the beauty of what God does:
Anything He exposes, heals, and restores becomes a weapon in the Kingdom.

The very lies I believed are now tools I use to expose the schemes of the enemy.
The unforgiveness that once held me captive has become a platform to declare that Jesus still sets people free.

Nothing is wasted in the hands of God.
Nothing.

But it requires humility.
And we don’t talk about that enough.

I'm Not Special—But He Is

Let me be real:

I am nobody.
I know nothing.
I am not wise, not spiritual, not worthy in my own flesh.
I am not “called” because of who I am.
I’m here because Jesus made me valuable when I was worthless.

I had to be humbled.
I had to be broken.
Because my view of myself was inflated and wrong.
And now?

Now I see clearly.

A Final Warning and a Prayer

Time is running out.
This isn’t the hour to sit in comfort or pet your emotions.
This is the hour to mature.
Your emotions don’t matter—truth does.
God is separating wheat from tares, light from darkness, true sons from false ones.

So I leave you with this:

Father,
Give them eyes to see and ears to hear.
Let the good seed fall on good soil.
Let there be a hunger for Your Word.
Strip away every false teaching, every prideful thought, every lie dressed as theology.
And draw them close to You.
May we love truth more than we love being right.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.

• —Isaiah 6:5

  “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

• —Matthew 13:30

  “Let both grow together until the harvest…”