THOUGHTS FOR THE ROAD....... LESS TRAVELED

Lessons learned for the Christian life.

You Have A Splinter, Where?

   Numbers 33:55 But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the land where you live.

   God was clear about the rules of inhabiting the land He promised the Israelites. They were to completely drive out the people already inhabiting the land. I think that this is not just because God did not want His chosen people harassed in their promised land. I believe that this also has everything to do with the sins of the nations that were being driven out. Sins of idolatry, immorality, etc. I love the verse above where God tells Moses that failing to drive the people out will be a thorn in their sides or a splinter in their eye.

   I have never had a splinter in my eye, I can only imagine that it is pretty horrible. If you ignore the splinter, hope that maybe it won't be bad enough to hurt you or cause you pain it can cause some real damage maybe even begin to fester and require surgery to remove. Maybe you realize that the splinter is bad or it hurts and you want to remove it, so you grab a hold of it and tug, but you don't quite get it all. One small little sliver of wood can fester into a full blown life threatening infection.

   This makes me think a lot about sin. The small little minute things we let crawl under our skin, wiggle into our daily lives. Often we ignore them until they start to bother us by drawing us away from our intimate relationship with God. Sometimes we just pull out the big nasty pieces that everyone else sees as harmful, but leave behind tiny shards that no one else sees.

   Sin is a lot like a splinter, it might seem small and harmless, but if you do not cut it out completely, entirely and disinfect the whole area it was lodged in, it is not going to just go away. It is going to fester and seep into other parts of your life.  Sin is what distances us from God. If you are feeling like you are not as close to God as you once were, or want to be, I suggest taking a good hard look at your life, you may need to cut out some splinters.

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