Taking Care of Business

I have been praying that God would show me my heart where there are things that need to be exposed and taken care of. That the places where I harbor junk that would get in His way would be shown.

And so it has happened in a most unlikely way. There is another blog I keep. I have a decent readership and I circulate among many of them. Yesterday my sister was harsh in her comment to another blogger and I knew she would get a response. I was okay with that. I figured she had made her bed and she would have to lie in it, so to speak. And my sister didn’t care either.

But someone commented and called her a bitch and that made me feel like I had to rise up and defend her by being mean and vile back. I knew I shouldn’t have done it but I couldn’t take it back. I apologized the best I knew how and have felt bad since.

And it occurred to me today that this was part of exposing my heart. Anger and agreeing with “taking care of things” through my own endeavors and rising up to go toe to toe with someone, even if it is in blogland, is something I guess I have to confess and deal with before the Lord.

I had a sense of peace during my prayer time today about the whole thing. It was then that I realized God will use any circumstance to show us where our hearts are still in rebellion towards him if we are willing to see. I blew it yesterday. And I know now that it was merely showing of a weed above ground where there is a root underneath. And the Lord will have to continue to work in me to dig it out until it is dead in me so that he might live more richly in me.

I take a step and distance myself from the mess because I don’t identify with my sin. I identify with what Christ has done in me. I do not live under condemnation, but in freedom. And if I lived under condemnation, I would continue to drag around the guilt of blowing it and messing up. Instead, I can live in the knowledge that my sin and my guilt have been dealt with and the fact that I need to continue to walk rightly before God and allow him to kill that weed problem.