Vomit

Yuck.

That's what went through my mind as I was awakened by the sound of my son getting sick all over my bedroom floor. He made an attempt to tell us he was sick by coming into our bedroom but before the words could come out, his dinner did.

The last 72 hours have been us nursing him back to health. For 48 hours he was vomiting and couldn't keep anything down. His energy level plummeted and his normally infectious smile faded. Our little guy was a sick little guy. Because I'm strange (for some of you that is not new information) I began to think of how violently his body was rejected anything in his stomach and his intestines. His body was expelling everything and anything in such a destructive manner.

I wonder how often I hold on to sin and pride in my life and yet I know the Spirit within me wants me to rid my life of the sin that draws me out of fellowship with God. I don't think that God's concept of my ridding my life of sin is "on my terms and my way"...rather, I think it maybe more along the lines of what I saw in my son this weekend: a violent urgency to rid the heart of destructive sin. God's intent is not that sin lingers in our life, but that it be expelled, destroyed, and all together gone. Sin is an affront to God's holiness, it grieves the Holy Spirit, and it squats on God's residence in our life.

Removing sin is never easy. I burdens me to hear so much about the freedom of Christ as a tool of passivity when it comes to sin. Grace was not meant to be a "get of jail free" card. Sometimes it's easy to abuse grace which can so easily divert our attention from the seriousness of sin. Jerry Bridges wrote in The Discipline of Grace that "the way to stay on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance." Repentance is vital in the violent removal of personal sin. Lord, I pray that I'll see sin for what it is. Help me to understand the destructive nature of sin and how important it is to immediately deal with sin through repentance. Help me not to hang on, linger in, or rest within my sinful nature; rather, help me to respond to the Holy Spirit's desire to remain holy, useful, and in fellowship with a most Holy God. Help me never to be a place where I'm so lukewarm with sin that God wants to vomit me from his mouth.