Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue; Though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within his mouth: Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him. Job 20:12-14
My wife called me in a panic one day as I was working as an assistant pastor at a church. “Honey,” she begged frantically, “can you please come home quickly? I was putting this piece of wood in the stove, and before I realized that it was too long to fit, it caught on fire. It’s hanging out of the stove and I don’t know what to do!” I jumped into the car, pointed the nose toward home, and cut the three minutes it usually took me to get there in half. My wife was not exaggerating her story. There she was, red-faced, holding onto the piece of wood for dear life. I grabbed the gloves and the only corner of the wood that had not yet succumbed to the inferno blazing inside the wood stove. With every bit of strength I had, I carried it out the front door and dropped it into the dirt that, thankfully, was soaked with the rain that was still falling.
My mind was on other things as I walked toward the house later that evening, but I was jolted back to the scene from earlier that afternoon. The scorched piece of wood lay lifeless next to the porch, the skeletal remains of a once-potent danger to our home. It made me think about how sin is just like that in our lives. If my wife had been nonchalant about calling me or about the danger she was facing, I would have never realized the importance of getting home to help her get that piece of wood out. When sin is in your life, you must not treat it with a lackadaisical attitude. That sin is a burning fire, a threat to your spiritual existence, if you just let it sit there and burn. If you don’t do everything you can to get it out, then it could spell the end of your spiritual life as you know it.
My wife could have been too embarrassed by her mistake to call me that afternoon and tell me what was going on. She could have tried to conceal the fact that there was a problem. In the end, it would have all been revealed, however, as I would have come home to see my whole house engulfed in flames. But my wife did the right thing. She let me know there was a problem, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take care of it without any damage. So it goes with the sin in your life. No admission of failure or embarrassment is so great that it is worth losing everything. One day that sin will be revealed anyway, and it just might be when the world watches you go down in flames. So just get it out. Remove that sin. Your life depends upon the decision you will make before it is too late to change.
Read also: Job 20:4-29
Quote of the day: "Playing with sin is toying with judgment.”