Cockleburs

This one is also not a topical word study of scripture.  I can’t think of any of them!  HA!  However, this is another “revelation” post!  When you grow up in church, you hear about sin.  Then, I think we take the liberty of defining sin.  Well, obviously, if it breaks one of the 10 Commandments, then THAT is a sin!  That’s it, folks!  10 things!  Haven’t killed or stolen or lusted after somebody’s spouse, today…I MUST be ok!  This is yet another lie of the enemy of our soul.  As much as we tend to put God in a box, we also put sin in a box…then slap the lid on, and forget about it!

Oh yes, we all know the verse about throwing off every sin that so easily entangles us (Hebrews 12:1).  But I think we might remember it a bit differently that it is written.  “Throw off all the big sins; the ones the world can see, and don’t worry about the rest of ’em.”  My friends, it’s the “little ones” that get us.  The ones we don’t let ourselves think about are the “burs under the saddle blanket,” if you will!  These are the ones that wrap themselves around us and trip us up.

Oh, this makes it sound like I’ve got it all together.  I assure you…I do not.  God is showing me big things, these days.  So my whole life, these little “burs” have been sources of huge guilt and shame for me!  I struggle with fear, anxiety, doubt, irritability, confidence, decision-making, worry, financial failures, rejection, and laziness…and those are just the Top 10!  But you see, all these years, I have called these things “failures” in my life; more areas in which I just wasn’t good enough.  These things aren’t just failures…the great majority of them are SIN!  These are things that God speaks against in His Word!  DO NOT worry, fear, doubt, be angry, doubt God’s goodness.  If the Bible expressly tells me not to do something, and I do it anyway…I have sinned!  The enemy has gotten his grimy little claws in me, and is pulling me away from my walk with Jesus!

This was another V-8 moment, friends!  God also tells me, in His Word, that when He allows us to be tempted, He provides a way out of it.  He tells me that when I rebuke the enemy, in Jesus’ name, he has to flee from me.  He tells me I CAN throw off sin, because I am a new creation, dead in my sin and alive in Christ Jesus!  He tells me that when He brings a sin to my mind, and makes me grieve over it, all I have to do is repent, and I am forgiven!  There is freedom in this, too!  God doesn’t want us to be entangled, so He lovingly shows and teaches us to be more like Him.

But, isn’t it just like God not to let it stop there?  Isn’t it just like God to teach us in unusual ways…ways that are specifically important to US?  Let me give you a little backstory.  My dad is a tough ole bird!  He is a rough and tumble cowboy!  While, in hindsight, I know without a doubt that he has always loved me fiercely, he has always been more of a “It’s too far from yer heart to kill ya, so go play” than a “Ahh, come here. Let Daddy kiss your knee and make it better” sort of a guy!  Today, as I was pondering this new revelation of being tempted and struggling with sin, God showed me something very tender! (We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  It makes us human!  We shouldn’t be burdened with guilt and shame from it.  We should repent and be free of it!)

It was like God was whispering to me, “Don’t you SEE how much I love you?  Don’t you KNOW that I let my Son die for you so you wouldn’t be separated from me?  Don’t you UNDERSTAND that I love you too much to let you hurt without a purpose?  Can you believe that I’m TRYING to take away some of the things that cause you pain…but you are hanging onto these things too tightly?”

Then, in a very tender moment, God allowed me to see a moment with my dad from when I was very young.  We had gone on a horse ride, and I had gotten cockleburs in my socks.  I vaguely remember my daddy picking cockleburs off of me!  I can see him bent down, poking his fingers with those burs, so that they wouldn’t poke ME!  This was a very cool picture of exactly what God wants to do with me…if I will let Him!

Lord, thank you for loving me SO much, in radical, personal ways!  Thank you for providing a way for me to be saved, to be freed from unrighteousness.  Thank you for picking the burs out of my life so they can’t hurt me, anymore.  In Jesus’ name, Amen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOECSQECaZI&list=PLD-kHFZ5VMDEmy2ZitTm-49srblUl5LAe