Walking along the beach I saw something that made an impact on me:
In the business of life, people often think the “little trash” they discard and mindlessly toss away somehow magically gets picked up and does no harm. You might think If you miss the trashcan “it’s close enough”, so you just don’t worry about it.
But what you toss aside with little thought ends up getting washed down the gutters and streets and ends up collected in a ring of filth in the seaside.
This made an impact on me when I realized that this trash is not so unlike the sin that I ignore in my life and refuse to deal with; all those sins that I “toss aside” and say “eh, it’s close enough. It doesn’t really matter” end up collecting and contaminating the environment of my soul.
What people sometimes fail to see is that this collective contamination in their own souls is not only hurting themselves, but it also ends up flowing “out into the ocean” and polluting the Church. All that filth in the streets and gutters of your own soul will eventually spill over and wash out into the ocean and pollute other environments.
The temptation for us is to look for the “big trash” in our lives and make sure that is taken care of; so we might try make sure we’re not committing adultery, committing corporate theft, or harboring murderous hatred towards anyone. And then we count ourselves clean not realizing that the Lord has already declared that no profane or unholy thing may be brought into His holy temple. We have ignored the things that we thought were “no big deal”, but they soon begin to collect into a very serious collection of filth.
All the while we bring our “little filth” into the church and some of it begins to spill over into the lives of others and collect with the “little filth” of other brethren doing the same thing; pretty soon you bring your little filth of bitterness into the church, however small it may be, and another brings in his or her little filth of gossip, and the two begin to collect into a pile of malicious gossip that begins to spread and grip the whole church.
Now, the city I live in tries to tackle this problem by hiring a very large force of workmen to sweep the streets; the church has tried something similar as we have advocated personal responsibility for spiritual cleanliness in favor of “outsourcing” to dynamic personalities, church programs, rehab groups, and pastors, in a desperate attempt to curtail the ever escalating pile of filth collecting in our assemblies. But, as you can see in the pictures above, despite these efforts, the filth just continues to grow.
This made an impact in my life because I realized that these little sins act as to spiritually arrest my heart; when the unclean and profane touches the holy place of God it arrests the current of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ declared the message of repentance and reconciliation to God and issued a call unto holiness; He declared the way of cleansing for our soul. The Word of God tells us that the Blood of Christ washes all who confess and repent clean of their sin.
This made such an impact as I realized that every time I chose to consume trash from the world—violence, sex, vulgarity, dirty humor, greed, and all these things— you create trash in your soul that is left behind and creates a collective mess within the church. And I realized that Jesus Christ has declared openly the way to be cleansed.
What I have been talking about is sin and leaven; we must understand the leavening of sin in the church and the harm it is doing.
I encourage you to read the following passages and begin considering for yourself these things. What is the proper response to sin in my life and how do I deal with it?
May the Holy Spirit bless you with all spiritual understanding and equip you with all spiritual things.
1ST JOHN 1:1-9 & 2:1-2
JOHN 8:31-32
2ND CORINTHIANS 4:6
LUKE 24:46-49
JOHN 3:1-6
EPHESIANS 6:12
EPHESIANS 3:10-12
We are called to live pure and clean lives as the Holy Children of God: therefore, let us depart from our iniquity by faith in Jesus Christ and receive in us the Spirit of Life and Love!
Biblical Reasons 