Our Thanksgiving family vacation was over. Greg and I, along with his parents, were nearing the end of our 8-hour road trip back home to the North Georgia mountains. We had spent the week in Orange Beach, Alabama with Greg’s entire family. As we sped along the interstate about an hour and a half from home, I saw tail lights of cars up ahead. Traffic began to slow and whatever had happened was clogging up the interstate around a sharp curve in the road.
Traffic moved at a snail’s pace, but move it did, which is a reason for praise in the mess that is Atlanta traffic. Thankfully, it was Saturday and not Friday, which meant a much lighter traffic volume on the highway.
Greg’s Mom and I mused about what might have happened as we inched forward. We could see several police vehicles stopped in the left lanes, and policemen were directing traffic into a single right-hand lane. Three fast moving lanes of traffic, plus a lane that merged from a perpendicular road, suddenly bottle-necked into one lane that moved about as fast as a herd of turtles.
Within a few minutes we approached the disaster that caused the traffic angst. A large truck loaded with eggs had gone into the sharp curve at a high rate of speed and, oops, did not emerge from the curve upright. A clean-up crew with a front-end loader was dumping the remains of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of eggs into a dumpster that sat on the side of the interstate. Scrambled eggs poured out of every crevice of the dumpster and ran down the road. It was gooey and gross.
After we got home and settled back in, I began to think about the egg mess on the interstate. Sin that is allowed to live in my heart is very much like the mess of eggs on the interstate. As long as I stay in close relationship with Jesus, peace flows in my heart and life. But, when I allow sin and disobedience to set up residence in my heart and life, the proverbial egg truck overturns and things begin to go awry.
Peace becomes a distant memory.
Unrest nags my soul.
The free-flow of grace and mercy come to a grinding halt, and it seems like my relationship with Jesus has been sabotaged.
Sin creates a gooey, gross mess in my heart and hinders my intimacy with Christ.
There is good news, however.
The job of the Holy Spirit, who lives in the heart of every Christ-follower, is to convict us of sin. If I will listen to His prompting, confess my sin to the Father, and turn from it, that gooey mess of sin will be cleaned up and the intimacy of my relationship with Jesus will return. Peace begins to flow freely again! Sweet peace.
Do you feel like there is a mess of eggs all over the road of your heart?
Are you harboring sin and disobedience to God’s Word in your heart?
Has the flow of peace in your life been dammed up?
In any relationship where something has come between two people, the need for reconciliation looms large. Our relationship with Jesus is no different. Sin and disobedience just flat out throw up a wall between you and the lover of your soul. The only thing that will tear that wall down and allow you to feel peace again is to admit that you messed up and ask God for forgiveness.
No matter the size of the disobedience, there is grace for it from the Father. You cannot out-sin His love and grace. Trust me, over the course of my 52 years, I’ve tried. But there was always grace for the moment and forgiveness for my heart. I don’t know about you, friends, but for me, there is no sin that is worth sacrificing the peace of God.
I am linking, via my Amazon affiliate code, to a wonderful book by Dr. Charles Stanley entitled, Finding Peace: God’s Promise of Life Free from Anxiety, Regret, and Fear.
How is your heart today? How may I pray for you?
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