Just like the dirty laundry, so often we have areas of our
lives that we know aren’t right, but nobody else knows, so we just put a
blanket over it. We hide things in our lives we don’t want people to know
about, things we should have dealt with a long time ago, but they’re still
hiding under the blanket where we put them. Three things I think we
specifically hide are bitterness, sin, and our past.
Bitterness
The other day I was holding my cat when my brother decided
to jump up on the porch. My cat panicked and scratched me pretty bad. The
scratch was deep and about two inches long, so I put a huge bandaid on it. I
decided to wear long sleeves the next day because I didn’t want anybody seeing
my bandaid, didn’t want to have to explain. At work the cut started hurting,
and the bandaid was annoying, but nobody knew because it was covered up.
Sometimes people hurt us, and we try to doctor it up, try to
put a bandaid on it. Then we go to church and wear our long sleeves,
figuratively speaking. We smile and act like everything is great; we sit in the
pew and listen to the message, but nobody knows we’re sitting there hurting and
wounded.
But Jesus doesn’t want you to have to go around with a fake
smile, covering up your hurts. You’re trying to put bandaids on wounds that
Jesus wants to heal!
Maybe you’ve been living with hurts and bitterness for a
long time, so long you’ve gotten used to it. You’ve felt the pain for so long
that it’s normal. Every now and then someone comes along and bumps it, and
ouch! It hurts!
Do you have any hurts that you’ve held for a long time? It
shouldn’t be normal to live with constant pain, and Jesus can heal those hurts
if we let Him.
Sin
I remember an Adventures in Odyssey episode about a little
boy whose mom sent him with some money to the store to buy flour. On his way
there, he stopped by the ice cream shop and spent her money on ice cream. He
had a wonderful time, eating ice cream with his buddies, but then he remembered
the flour! It had been a long time since he left. He went home without any
money or flour, and decided to tell his mom someone took his money.
She panicked and called the police. They came and asked the
boy a lot of questions. He told them about the big man who demanded his mom’s
flour money. He told them how he tried to fight the man off, but the man was
too big. They searched for the man, but of course never found him. The local
news station found out and decided to do a story on it. Soon the whole town
knew of the boy’s supposed bravery. The mayor eventually found out, and decided
to give the boy an award. The boy accepted the award, and it hung in his room
for a long time.
During the whole story, I was waiting for the boy to get
caught, but he never did. Nobody ever knew the truth, except him. He finally
took the award from the mayor down and put it in his closet, but he knew it was
there. It was a constant reminder of what he had done.
Do we have anything in our lives that is a reminder of our
sin? Do we still have sin in our life? If we do, it’s time to clean house.
Nobody else might know about that hidden thing in the closet, but you know, and
God knows. It’s time to get rid of it and get forgiven.
Our Past
Maybe it’s a memory you wish you could forget. Maybe it’s
guilt or shame that you can’t seem to get rid of. You’ve lived with shame and
regret all this time, and you’re sick of it. It’s like a trial, and the devil
is constantly bringing accusations against you. The good news is that when you
got saved, Jesus became your defense.
If you’re innocent, Jesus can stand up to the devil and say “You’ve
been the accuser long enough. The Judge has said my client is innocent, so what
are you doing trying to still tell them they’re guilty?”
And if you are guilty, Jesus already took the penalty when
He died on the cross. He removed your guilt when He did that. So when the devil
comes to accuse you of things you’ve done in the past, you can remind him that
Jesus took your punishment and guilt, and he has no right to accuse you any
more.
If anybody had a past, it was Paul. He was a murderer and
persecutor of Christians. He was also one of the top religious leaders of the
day, and very well-known. Almost everyone knew of all the bad things he had
done. If someone had seen him before his conversion and knew he had gotten
saved, they probably would have thought, “That’s awesome he got saved, but he’ll
never have a ministry.”
But how do we remember him? We don’t remember him as Saul
the murderer, but rather as Paul, the great apostle and writer of almost half
of the New Testament. He traveled and took the gospel all over the world,
suffered beatings and persecution, and discipled young Christians like Timothy.
If you give God your past, He can replace it with an amazing
future! He can give you such a turnaround that people will have a hard time
even remembering who you used to be because you’ve changed so much.
Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the thoughts that I think
toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” He has a plan for your life, and He can work in impossible
situations like Paul’s.
What do you have hidden under a blanket? Is it bitterness?
God doesn’t want you to have to keep that bitterness any longer. He wants to
replace it with healing.
Is it sin or disobedience? If so, God wants to forgive you
and make you righteous. Forgiveness is available if you’ll remove that hidden
sin out of your life and give it to God.
Have you been hiding your past? God loves you too much to
make you hang onto your past. He doesn’t want you to have to hide it any more,
and He wants to give you a great future. He is the only One who can fix an
impossible situation. He can take you further than you ever thought you could
go and ever could have gone on your own.
LOOOOOOVE THIS!!!!!! You always bless me. I love to read your blog! May the Lord keep on using you to shine His light brighter than ever!
ReplyDelete