Purging and Yearning

 


Most of us have a favorite shirt. Let’s say you’re wearing that favorite shirt as you’re packing for vacation. You’ve got your bags all packed and you throw a load of laundry in the morning before you leave, including your favorite shirt so you can wear it when you get back, but you forget to switch it to the dryer in your haste to get out the door to the airport.

You have a fabulous time on vacation and you actually get to do quite a bit of shopping and purchase what could be future favorite shirts! But when you get home you are horrified to find that your favorite shirt is sitting in the washer, covered in mildew. Nothing you do can get it all out, but you get it much better and you think, “Surely it’ll be fine. It’s just a few spots that you can hardly see.” But that’s not how mildew works.

You carefully fold your favorite shirt, along with all your new ones, into your drawers and go about your life. That mildew is insidious though. While you’re not looking, it is infecting ALL the clothing in your drawer. It takes time and you don’t notice it at first. After a while you realize that your favorite shirt really has had it and you regretfully toss it out. But before long you start to notice mildew spots on the new clothes you bought on vacation. And then on all the clothes that were in that drawer!

So get rid of all evil and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. And yearn like newborn infants for pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up to salvation,  1 Peter 2: 1-2

In these verses, Peter is calling us to rid ourselves of behaviors that infect our hearts. They taint our ability to hear from God and to allow His Word to sink in. First we have to get rid of the evil, then we have a clean space for the good. Obviously, being human, we cannot rid ourselves once and for all of sin. But this is a warning to us that as soon as sin is brought to our attention we should purge it from our lives immediately. We should not entertain it further or allow it to linger.

The next key is the yearning. If you’ve ever seen a hungry baby, you know the urgency with which it yearns for milk! This is the urgency we are being called to with regards to God’s Word. I’m not gonna lie, I fall way short of this, but I’m glad to say that I definitely see progress! Writing these has inspired my heart and my thinking to long more for God’s Word. I think ahead to the next day and wonder what it will be about. Sometimes, I peek at the scripture for the next day and then puzzle over what God will speak to me through it! Like so many other things in life, with God’s Word you get out of it what you put into it. If you read a verse real quick in the morning and then go about your day, that’s what you get. It’s not nothing, but it’s not going to give you much. But if you take time, dig deep, read about what the words meant, study what other scholars have discovered, you can learn so much.

Here’s the Thing: What I’ve found is that the more I learn, the more I hunger for more!

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