Are You Tangled In Sin?

Has sin tangled with your emotions and left behind a knotted mess in your heart? It’s like trying to straighten a string of lights on an overly dried-out Christmas tree. Why in heaven’s name is taking the lights off a tree so much harder than putting them on?

 

Two weeks after Christmas, my mother-in-law and I began pulling the lights away from the crispy branches. Razor-sharp pine needles poked through my t-shirt as I reached over the top to grab the lights she was tossing over. In the midst of our light-removing efforts, the strings intertwined and knotted themselves into a post-Yuletide mess. It makes a girl wonder how three strands of 150 twinkling lights can pull such a snag in a perfectly good day.

 

Trying to untangle strands of lights is discouraging. But even more discouraging is dealing with emotions tangled in sin. Have you ever tried yanking the kinks out of raw emotions only to find a bigger knot than you started with?

 

Sin is the root of most emotional entanglements.

 

Sin tangles with our emotions. I believe it’s the catalyst for emotional catastrophe.

 

Sin is subtle. It twists, bends, and distorts truth. Like a mirage, it looks beautiful from a distance but up close it’s a distorted mess.

 

Sometimes, we get so tangled in sin that we forget what it’s like to be God’s girl. We get accustom to the presence of sin twisting through our lives that it becomes the new “normal.”

 

Unleashed emotions roaring out of control lead to sin.

 

Emotional messes seem to catapult us into the kind of sin we never thought we’d indulge in. Until one day after folding the fourth load of laundry, our well-meaning-selves begin dabbling in things that have real sin potential.

 

At this moment, we must ask ourselves: Are we choosing sin over spiritual holiness? Are we turning away from the teachings of Jesus? Are we growing numb to sins that seem insignificant?

 

I like the way the Message paraphrases Deuteronomy 30:16:

 

“And I command you today: Love GOD, your God. Walk in his ways. Keep his commandments, regulations, and rules so that you will live, really live, live exuberantly, blessed by GOD, your God, in the land you are about to enter and possess.”

 

After a little pulling, twisting, and unraveling, my husband’s mama and I succeeded in separating the strands of lights. This is what God’s presence in our lives can do. He loosens our kinks, untangles our emotions, and pours divine de-tangler over our knots.