Pests Are Like Sins, Deal with Them Promptly!
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.’ (Proverbs 28:13); ‘Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.’ (1 Peter 5:8)
Sin is like a pest that has invaded your house; it sneaks in without warning, it can wreak havoc while in the house, and it must be eventually dealt with. Sin can be big like a raccoon, or it can be very small like a ghost ant, but both can do much damage inside the home if left unchecked; it can cause immediate catastrophic damage, or it can slowly eat away at what it is attacking until without warning the culmination of the nibbles reveals a large wound (or a collapsed wall).
We need to be on guard for sin in our lives much like the pests in our homes. Acting to prevent an invasion we can spray bug inhibitors around the outside walls and seal up openings in our homes to stop bugs before they enter. We can avoid watching risqué movies and TV shows or skip over gossip columns in the news and take steps to avoid sinful situations. When pests do break through our defenses, we need to react as soon as they are detected; we set ant traps, spray insecticide, set traps or call a pest exterminator to remove the pests. When sin breaks through our defenses, we must immediately recognize it, not gloss over it, and take steps to either stop the sinful act or eliminate its cause from our presence.
Unlike pest control where there is a great degree of ‘do-it-yourself’, the removal of sin and ‘sin control’ always requires a ‘call’ to and intervention by Jesus. We need to confess our sin to Him in repentance and ask Him for forgiveness. The grace of Jesus removes the sin from us. We also need to have Jesus continually ‘on call’ to prevent sin. We do this by staying continually in touch with Him through prayer, Scriptural study, and fellowship with others.
My late mother used to say, ‘it’s not shameful to have a bug in the house, but it’s shameful to keep it’. We can say the same with sin; we all fall short in the area of sin in our lives. It does not have to be a ‘big’ sin but even the smallest of sins contaminates us completely. But in confessing our sins to Jesus, asking Him to remove and forgive us of those sins, and in taking steps to prevent further events of sin from happening, we can be humble yet unashamed in our daily walk with Him. Jesus is the only Sin Exterminator we have, and the only one we need!
