Have you ever had a hard time trying to find something in your closet to wear? Maybe you have dug through your closet and tried on a few things only to find that none of it fits? Don’t worry, you are not the only one!
If you are like me, you probably think to yourself that maybe someday you will eventually wear it again, so you hang the clothes back up on the rack. That was my dilemma this past Sunday morning. Three outfits later I was ready to go, and yes, I hung back up all of the clothes that didn’t fit. After all, they were good clothes, just not any that I could wear.
As I was walking out of the closet I heard the Lord speak to my heart and tell me that “some things just need to be thrown out.” Oh, how true that is! But I knew that the Lord was not just talking to me about a bunch of old clothes, he was pointing out sin as well.
Everyone struggles with sin and we sometimes live with it for a while until we become convicted about it. But instead of throwing that sin out, we keep it tucked away in our life. There in the recesses of our heart, it stays dormant for a while until we decide to pull it out of the closet and try it on again to see if it still feels like sin.
Sadly it doesn’t even occur to us that sin is not like some old piece of clothing that we can shove back in the closet in case we need it again later.
We should look at sin as though it is something that we wouldn’t want hanging around in our life at all, but we don’t. It’s probably for the same reason that we hang on to old clothes, and that’s because it’s hard to get rid of things that we love. That favorite black dress or that old pair of sneakers? Can you imagine throwing them out? What about those “go-to” cuss words that get used so often? Maybe a spiteful attitude that shows up when necessary? What about that stack of lies that are ready to be pulled out whenever you need them? Now those are hard to throw out!
In fact, right about now, you may be giving yourself a reason to be okay with keeping that “old back-up” sin. But just listen to what 2 Corinthians 7:10 warns us about…“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation WITHOUT REGRET, whereas worldly grief produces DEATH.”
God’s word makes it plain and simple that when we repent of our sins, the godly repentance that causes us to turn from those sins, never to go back to them again leads us to salvation. However, if we treat them like we would the things of the world, and constantly go back to that sin, it will eventually lead to death. I don’t know about you, but one look at my closet leads me to believe that I need to get busy “spring cleaning.”
What about you?
