Living in Filth ...

My son broke our vacuum cleaner!  I have to preface that my verve for cleaning, organizing and rearranging has not genetically passed along to him.  You must know that he almost never vacuums; it's just not one of his strong points and if he can avoid the task of vacuuming, he certainly will but on one recent occasion, he did decide to take that route at a time when it became absolutely necessary due to build-up of what we'll call "debris and gunk".

And he broke the vacuum cleaner!  The nerve! 

So, ... naturally, we needed to purchase a new vacuum cleaner.  We got one by Eureka, the kind that doesn't require vacuum bags!  It’s great!  There’s just this cylinder-shaped container that catches all the debris that the vacuum sucks up. 

Well, there was a period of nearly two weeks between the death of our old vacuum and the purchase of our new one.  Needless to say, I went to vacuuming right away.  I took the new machine out of the box, connected its attachments, plugged it in and away I went.  I vacuumed just one room and noticed movement … you know … in that cylinder-shaped container that catches all the debris that the vacuum sucks up.  So, I turned it off and pulled the container out. 

Sure enough, it was FULL of YUCK that looked like THIS …

THAT WAS IN MY CARPET?  ALL THAT??  That is, in my opinion, A LOT and I couldn’t even see any of it!  I had no idea we were living in that filth and I certainly didn’t realize it could build up so quickly. 

You know, .. SIN is like that.  Sometimes it’s right there under our noses, we’re living in it and we don’t even realize it.  If we don’t pay attention and remove it right away, if we ignore it because we don't want to deal with it, it can build up in our lives, eventually becoming obstacles of "debris and gunk".  When we're finally ready to do something about it, it might just be that permanent damage is unavoidable (we may suffer earthly consequences of our sin), though, spiritually, God wipes our slate clean because God is a God of FORGIVENESS and RESTORATION! 
For those of us who are in Christ ... believing that He (Jesus) physically and spiritually received the punishment we deserve when He was crucified and descended into hell, trusting that He overcame the shackles of death by His unsurpassing power, knowing that He crushed Satan's grip on Him and all mankind who believe when He was raised from the dead ... we are restored and Jesus resumes His reign next to His Father in heaven. 

I know that it is impossible for me to prevent ANY "debris and gunk" from getting into my house so I have to vacuum on a regular basis.  In the same way, it is impossible for us to prevent ANY sin from being in our lives ... we still sin but we continue to strive toward eliminating them from our lives.  God is our vacuum cleaner and we can go to Him on a regular basis and allow Him to remove our "debris and gunk".  1 John 1:8-9 says that "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess ours sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  He restores us and helps us to choose differently, react differently, respond differently ... until the sins we continue to struggle with become less and less.   It's a process and it needs to be dealt with on a regular basis; the longer we put it off, the more prone we will be to incurring greater consequences or damage ... turn to the LORD and let Him be your vacuum so you don't keep "living in filth".