What Are You Practicing?

Happy Spring! Along with the 80 degree weather (which I love) come the weeds in my yard (which I despise). It’s time for me to be driven completely mad by those little guys. I felt like I left my yard in pretty good shape before winter. I had worked weekly to remove the weeds.

But they’re back.

Isn’t that just like the sin in our lives? We wack at them, pull at them, and scream at them. Yet they keep popping their resilient heads up.

This winter, I’ve been studying the Abide Bible study by Jen Wilkin & Flower Mound Women’s Bible study group. She has walked us through 1, 2, & 3 John with weekly homework and a podcast. One of my biggest takeaways is that we are either practicing righteousness or we are practicing lawlessness/unrighteousness/sin. Each time I speak, dwell on a thought, or make an action, I am either practicing my obedience to God or I’m practicing my disobedience.

I’m sad to confess that recently my attitude toward my sin has mirrored my attitude toward the weeds in my yard. I simply want to be accepted socially. I haven’t put out early spring weed & feed or any other weed deterrents. Instead, I’ll let Kevin mow over them so that the neighbors don’t complain. I just want to trim them up a bit so that you have to look closely to see them.

But God doesn’t want us to have this attitude toward our sin. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time practicing our sin, manicuring it so that we are still socially acceptable. We get so good as gossiping or lying that we convince ourselves that we’re not sinning. We stay in relationships that don’t glorify God because we believe we are in control of the situation when we aren’t.

God wants us to eradicate our sin. He doesn’t want us simply to be content with sinning less. He wants us to stop sinning. To practice our righteousness. To walk in the light, as He is in the light. To live out His perfect love not in word or talk but in deed and truth (1 John 3:18).

What has your attitude toward sin been like lately? Are you content with where you are? Or are you putting effort forth daily to cling to the Holy Spirit and live a life that glorifies God?

Here’s a verse to meditate on:

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
1 John 3:9