You know that moment when you're working on a crocheted or knitted project and you realize that you made a mistake... six rows back? Every once in awhile you can make up for it by adding or reducing stitches or something, but it doesn't look as good. And if you look closely, you can see how that mistake affected the entire project. Often, you have to unravel all six of those rows you've worked so hard on since the mistake--sometimes even after you "fix" it.
Have you ever thought that our life is like that at times? We make a mistake, cover it up, and move on, thinking that it'll hold well enough so that no one will notice. But then we end up with something misshapen and not at all as we imagined it. Most times, we just have to live with the mistakes, or rather the consequences of the mistakes. But now and then we have to backtrack and actually fix the mistake.
I think that's what our relationship with Christ is like sometimes. It's a continual work in progress, molding us into something beautiful. But we make mistakes--we sin. Because of Christ's finished work on the cross, we're not in bondage to that sin if we've believed on Him as our Savior. But just because we're free from the bondage of sin doesn't mean that we're entirely free from the presence of sin in our lives. We make mistakes; we trip and fall. We yield to temptation. We mess up.
Thanks to Christ's forgiveness, we can immediately confess that sin (fix our mistake, so to speak) and move on (1 John 1:9). Sometimes, though, we ignore the problem and keep going, perhaps hoping that it will go away on its own or that we'll forget about it later. We also ignore the fact that there are consequences for our sin.
Perhaps sometimes it feels like God rips out all of the hard work you've put into something. Or you suddenly hit a snarl in your "yarn" and can't move on.
These are kinda cheesy examples, but in short, sometimes we just have to stop, look back over our lives, and see if there's anything that's standing between us and God that is keeping us from seeing Him or moving forward in our lives. Then we have the wonderful blessing of confessing that to Christ and being forgiven.
Are you feeling stuck in your life? Do you feel as if everything you try to do falls apart? Perhaps you need to stop and examine your walk with Christ. I know that I need to, every day of my life.
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