“Dump Station – Not Drinking Water”

This is what the sign said.  I walked past it at least a dozen times over the last few days while camping.  A dump station is where human waste goes to stay and should not be a place that people go to fill up.  How absurd to think that someone might actually take a drink out of the hose there.  Right?  Blech! It got me thinking, we women need signs like this in our own lives.  Signs posted to help us remember that once we get rid of waste in our lives, we should not pick it up again. 

Yet, we do this all the time.  We struggle with a sin, overcome it and put it away from us, then in a “weak” moment we find ourselves giving in to temptation (enticed by our own desires, see James 1:14).  We go to our personal dump and grab up our old sin again, taking a nice long drink of contaminated death-water. 

The Bible has a verse for this, Proverbs 26:11, “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.”  Another nice image for us to remember.

Why do we continually return to familiar sins that we know bring no fulfillment or satisfaction to our lives?  It is idiotic and fits the definition of insanity.  Yet it is a disturbing pattern that we fall prey to far too often.  As unsettling as it is to think of getting a drink from a hose used to rinse out sewer lines or a dog eating his same lunch twice, what happens in our lives is much more grotesque. 

Ponder this with me for a minute.  We (Christians) allow ourselves to revel in darkness and sin, while having full knowledge of the price paid for us to be free from this entrapment.  We gratify ourselves while staring at the bleeding, dying body of Christ on the cross, knowing it was our sin that put him there.  Now, that is utterly disturbing behavior.  Let’s not take this lightly.

The warning signs have already been posted for us, we just need to pay attention and heed what God has written. “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” Isaiah 59:2.  Knowing this is what sin causes, why would we ever return to it?  Why do we act the fool and repeat our folly?  Stop it already.  Put your sin away for good.  Don’t keep returning and drinking from the same contaminated well.  Have you forgiven a wrong?  Then don’t take the hurt back up.  Have you been granted peace?  Then don’t fall back into anxiety.  Have you turned from sexual immorality?  Then don’t seek satisfaction of the flesh once again.  The disease found in these waters will bring you misery, just like last time you tried them.

Ladies, commit yourselves to drinking from the one source of living waters, which is Jesus Christ.  Only he can keep you from enslaving yourself once again to old habitual sins.  If you are his, remember he finished his work on that cross and is victorious over all sin.  We are able to enjoy that victory along with him.  “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Romans 6:14. 

Once you let go of a sin in your life, don’t go picking it up again.  It is waste and belongs in the dump of hell.  Walk forward under the grace of God and in the victory of Christ. 

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