toys…everywhere

my nephew, colin, is spending a few days with us, keeping jake company. for some reason, the boys think it’s incredibly fun to dump toys everywhere until the floor in jake’s room is littered with so many toys, you literally can’t see the floor. then, when i tell them to pick up, the job is so overwhelming they just sit there for the longest amount of time. after awhile, i go in and start encouraging them, giving them individual jobs. guess who does most of the cleaning? me. it’s so frustrating. i clean up one mess while they move on to another.

i began thinking: as children of god, our lives are so similar to the mess-making abilities of little boys. we allow a small compromise. before we know it, we have sin in our lives. we make a big mess. so big, we don’t know where to begin cleaning. we’re helpless regarding the mess we’ve created. we need someone who’s bigger, better, and much greater than our mess to do the work for us because we’re overwhelmed with the consequences of our compromise. we need god.

why are we often so slow to show our mess to god (he sees it anyway)? why do we go to church pretending to be the same or feeling we can never get back to where we were? the reason is because we’re listening to the enemy (without even knowing it) and the lie that one day we can clean up the mess. we hear the voice saying: when i go away to college things will be different. when school starts i will make things right. one day, i’ll be in a church service, and it will be so good that i will make things right. when i graduate, i’ll change. the voice is different for each of us, yet it’s saying the same thing…we can change, one day, when we’re really ready.

it’s a lie! you can’t do it. that’s why jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. he longs for us to be honest with him. to tell him we’re dealing with sin and that we need him. the truth is, we all need his forgiveness. we also need to surrender our sin to him so he can help us overcome.

so, today i want to encourage you to take your mess to god. he loves you. he wants the best for you. he knows what’s right. trust him!