Have you ever noticed when you live somewhere for a long period of time you start to accept the way things are? You look over the ugly wallpaper, the stains in the carpet don’t look that bad, jiggling the toilet handle to get it to stop running just becomes what you do every time. We are the same way with ourselves. That little sin that you have been committing for months or even years goes unnoticed when you examine yourself. The fact that you are not consistent in your attendance at Sunday school becomes no big deal and soon enough your church attendance suffers too. Your tithes and offerings to God are perhaps shortchanged or maybe less than they could be. The longer we do these things, the more normal they appear to us.

Is it time for a remodel? When my wife and I moved to Harrison we remodeled the house that we are living in first. While the house was a nice house, we wanted to do a few things before we lived there to make it look and function the way it should. New paint, floors, vanities, faucets, lighting, trim, doors, siding just to name a few of the things we did. One of the things I noticed almost right away was when you remodel one thing, most of the time you have to then remodel the things around what you just did because they look bad next to the newly remodeled item. For instance, if you paint the walls but leave the trim looking dingy and outdated it looks horrible. If you replace the flooring in the living room but leave the stained carpet in the hallway it looks horrible. If you replace the vanity in the bathroom but put the old corroded and stained faucet back in, you get it, it looks horrible. The same thing holds true with us. I’m not talking about how we see ourselves I’m talking about we look when we look through the lens of Scripture. The writer of Hebrews put it this way in Hebrews 4:12 (KJV), “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”. That verse tells us the Scripture can dig into our hearts, souls, and thoughts. Where you and I might get used to looking at that old stain, the Word of God does not change. It does not tell us today that something is okay that was not okay last year. If it is SIN, it is SIN period. Like I said maybe it is time for a remodel. Open up the Word of God, read it and study it because it will point out what you and I overlook. The cool thing is, as we shine the light of Scripture on one area and get it right, it will become obvious that other areas will need some attention too. This should be an ongoing thing regardless of our spiritual maturity because there is always room for improvement. It isn’t always fun to remodel, in fact it is hard work, but the end result is always good.

Come join us this Friday at 7 pm for Friday Night Fire at Open Door Baptist. We will be using the Word of God to help us do some remodeling in our lives and we would love to see you there!