May 23, 2010
Sweeping Webs instead of Killing Spiders
Posted by Mitch Sliwa in Gospel Living | Comments (3)
In my basement, I built myself an office to work out of. From time to time, I will break out the vacuum and do my best to decimate the spider webs that have built up over time. I successfully defeat all of webs and feel prideful in my victory. It was quite effortless, and I know inherently that the webs will return in time. I managed to destroy the webs, but I failed to kill the spiders.
How often have we done this in our own lives? As Christians, there are things in our lives that we wish to destroy. It could be habitual lying, sexual addiction, eating disorders, a prideful tongue, drinking too much or a host of other sins that we struggle with. As Christians, we daily wage war on sins that creep up in our lives. The war that goes on in a Christian is the sign to them that they have been given a new heart. As people who are born fallen, by nature we love our sin and despise God and his commandments. When God chooses to seek us out and find us, he gives us a new heart which longs after God and hates sin. We have a fancy word for this called "sanctification". In simple terms, it means becoming more like God and less like us. Sanctification is a life long process that begins when God gives us new hearts and ends when our heart stops beating. We will always battle with sin, always end up losing in various ways and need to seek God for forgiveness. This is the plight of all Christians (including the super spiritual ones which pretend they have no sin) and we will not be fully free from sin until we see God face to face.
Many times, I have attacked my sin problem much like I attack my spider web problem. I have erroneously appraised the situation. My problem is not with the webs, but with the spider. If I simply kill the spider, the webs will no longer be an issue. Just for the record, I kind of like spiders in my basement because they eat all of the other bugs that piss me off even more, but for the sake of this illustration agree with me that spiders deserve to be killed. Because I sweep webs instead of spend my efforts killing spiders, the webs always come back and sometimes multiply greater than before. The same is true with killing sin. We cannot simply go after the sin itself, but we must go after the root and dig it out. I have much to say on this issue, and I will be sharing subsequent posts in the near future.
Please listen to this song by Timothy Brindle. Its a song called "Lets Kill Sin" off of his album "Killing Sin" based off the puritan work "The Mortification of Sin and Death" by John Owen.
puritan work "The Mortification of Sin and Death" by John Owen.
Posted by Mitch Sliwa in Gospel Living
