Raking
This week I got to go home, while I was home I decided me, Brooks, and Savannah should go rake all the leaves outside for mom and dad before they got home from shopping. There weren't a ton of leaves, but a pretty good amount. In the end I think 8 bags were filled up, just to give you a visual. There was one problem, we have a dog who poops (i know gross but stay with me here) a lot. So I asked Brooks to go out and scoop up all the poop before we started picking up all the leaves. He finished and came back inside to finish making posters for sis, I went outside and started raking. I was maybe two minutes into my raking when i raked through a big pile of dog poop (yeah it was real gross). So I called Brooks back out and we took care of that. Needless to say that wasn't the only pile of poop that he missed, there were tons more and I even had the pleasure of stepping in one (yup that's the worst).
Now was Brooks lazy? Did he not do what I asked him to do? No, he really did go outside and he thought he did the job 100%. He was actually shocked that he had missed any. The problem was that he couldn't scoop all the poop because it was covered up by leaves. Now lets look at this through our spiritual lenses. Poop is obviously sin, when we become christians we get rid of all the really obvious stuff (what Brooks did the first time). The obvious stuff being not cursing, getting drunk, watching bad stuff, hanging out with the wrong people, ect. Then God calls us a level higher, He tells us to start raking. So we start raking by reading the word, going to church, having a quiet time, fasting, surrounding ourselves with good influences, ect. Then once we start raking we find more "poop." It could be that someone came up to you and said something, and you blew up at them. We say uh....where did that come from? We begin to notice the little things we say that are really hurtful to others. We begin to notice how we treat others, and how we should treat others. We feel convicted about how much time we waste. We see the relationships that need to be weeded out. We go back and confess things that we would normally let slide. You get the point. So what is going on? Well the closer we get to God the more we are able to see our darkness. Because He is light, and we are dark, when we spend time with Him, He reveals more of our darkness to us. Not all at once, or else we'd be overwhelmed, but a little bit at a time. Once we rake that area, and then see the sin, then we need to take care of it.
Often times we rake, and see the sin and do nothing about it. We either purposefully ignore it or we don't know how to take care of it. That's where the shovel comes in handy aka the Holy Spirit. He helps us through and helps us get rid of all the "poop." His job is to make us full mature lovers, so that we will be ready as a bride. We are to be equally yoked with Jesus. First we have to get all of this "poop" out of our lives. It's not done easily, it takes time, and we have to remember to rake. If we don't rake, spend time with the Lord, then we'll think everything is fine. When really we have a lot of trouble underneath all the leaves. Satan uses the leaves to deceive us. We to Americanize our religion and what we believe. So that we hid our sin, and we say it really is ok. We think it's ok because we're comparing it to this world. When really we should be comparing ourselves to Jesus. We need to go to the light in order to find the darkness in our lives, not go to the dark hoping it will reveal what the problem is. If we continue to go to the dark we'll come back feeling like we did nothing wrong, and still have an emptiness inside of us.
So in conclusion we need to first get rid of the obvious, then begin to rake, then take care of it. Go to what is biblically right, not what the world says is right.
God Bless,
Ashley
p.s.- sorry momma for saying poop so many times :) love you