A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a little "clean up" with a few friends of mine. This wasn't a regular clean up job though. It was something God had laid on our hearts. The problem was we had procrastinated...
We had driven by this fence row a few times. We had all noticed the trash blowing freely in the fence, especially the big plastic pieces hung up in the barb wire. So we discussed it and knew, we had to clean it up! Well, we were all busy and several weeks went by before we got back around to that trash in the fence. The thing was, what had once been large pieces of plastic in the fence, had now been shredded by the wind into smaller pieces of plastic. The large pieces that would have been easy to remove were now slivers of plastic clinging for life to the fence. And, it was now not only in the fence, it was also in the trees and weeds close to the fence. Our clean up job was growing! So we set the date and got the fence row - and trees and weeds - cleaned up!
As we cleaned the fence row, it occurred to us how much this trash was like sin in our lives. How when we listen to the Holy Spirit the first time and remove the sin from our life, it is so much easier to remove. But, unfortunately, too often we don't listen the first time. We allow sin to remain and become a part of us, and it becomes so hard to remove. It gets a hold, even a stronghold in our lives. What makes it even worse, we're not the only ones our sin affects. Like the plastic that had shredded and blew into nearby trees and weeds, our sin has an effect on the lives of people around us.
As we finished cleaning up the fence line, we were all thankful for an amazing God who taught us a little lesson through our "hands on" experience.
