I was coloring my hair at home, which is always dangerous because I do not always pay close attention and I drip it on my clothes or it gets on the counter. I had finished putting the color in my hair and had walked off to do something else.  A little while later, I glanced down at my forearms and noticed they were splotched with burgeoning color. I ran to the bathroom and used the special liquid that removes color from skin, and all was well.

However, God showed me that this was just the way that sin stains our lives. When the hair color goes on, it is clear. I didn’t even see it on my skin. It took a while for color to actually imprint on my skin.

Sin, when it is new, does not show its consequences in our lives immediately. But as we let it remain there, it colors and changes our lives. It revises how we see things, because our connection with the Holy spirit is weakened, and we no longer hear His conviction of sin and utilize Him as our compass. Our conscience becomes seared as if with a hot iron, and other sins don’t seem so bad anymore.

Before we know it, sin has tainted our entire life. You can’t compartmentalize sin, keeping it just one small area of your life. It infects everything, but most of all your connection to and communication with God. It is like plotting a ship’s course and being off by 1 degree – you don’t see the problem with the error until you are a long way off and are totally lost.

Thankfully, repentance (acknowledging that what you did was wrong, wanting to turn away from it and then actually turning toward God) is like hair color removal liquid. It immediately reconnects us to the Spirit of God as it wipes away the stain of unrepentant sin. There may still be consequences in our life of our sin, but our spiritual connection is restored and we can move forward in right relationship with God.

An even better option would be we applying stain protection to our lives to keep the sin from staining us. This would entail is staying in God’s Word, spending time in His presence, being accountable to our spiritual family, and most importantly, keeping a daily inventory of the things we did both right and wrong.  This allows us to repent quickly after our sin and correct our course back toward a godly life.

QUESTIONS FOR THE DAY:

1. What sins have been slowly seeping into your life, remaining there because you will not deal with it (whether out of fatigue, fear or rebellion)?

2. What is getting in the way of you truly repenting of that sin?

3. If you are afraid of giving up your sin, what are you afraid will happen if you give it up?