Uprooting Sin

This summer I wanted to get rid of some nasty prickly weeds in a patch of woods that I like to visit. So I brought my weed whacker and mowed them all down. It was wonderful – until they started to grow back again. So I realized that in order to get rid of them, I needed to pull them up by the roots. As I pulled them up, I soon discovered that the roots ran in a tangled network from one plant to another, sometimes in unexpected and confusing directions. I also learned that the biggest plants didn’t have the largest roots. Some of the deepest and strongest roots came from plants that I almost overlooked. Once I had uprooted the plants and pulled out as many of the roots as I could, I realized that new plants will quickly spring up from the roots that I couldn’t get. In order to fill the void that I had caused by pulling up the nasty weeds, I scattered some quick-grow grass seed. My hope is that by the time the weeds try to grow back, the new grass will have already crowded them out and the weeds will not be able to overcome their new competition.

As I dealt with these annoying weeds, I thought about how we try to remove sin from our lives, and I recognized a lot of similarities.
• If we think that we can get rid of sin in our lives by removing the most obvious and visible parts of it, we’ll soon find out that the sin will come right back. Sin has deep roots that lie beneath the surface of what we’re usually aware of.
• When we start the difficult work of uprooting our sin from the deep places in our souls where it lurks, we will be surprised at where the sin runs. Calvinists call this “total depravity:” every corner of our lives is tainted by sin, just as the weeds’ roots ran even through the places that I thought were clear. As soon as you assume that there is one aspect of your life that is free from sin, you run the risk of allowing its undiscovered roots to spring forth.
• The most dangerous sins sometimes seem to be innocent and easy to deal with, just as the plants that were easy to overlook had strong roots. We need to be vigilant and address even the smallest sins because we never know how much they are ruining the goodness that God wants in our lives.
• Sin is never simple to deal with. Each sin is connected to other sins in confusing ways. If you attempt to remove one sin, you’ll soon find out that it is associated with other sins in ways that you would have never guessed. You can’t just work on sin in one part of your life, because it is part of the sin in other areas as well.
• It’s not enough to get rid of the sin in your life. You need to replace it with something healthy and blessed, just as I want to replace my weeds with grass. They tell addicts who come out of rehab that they need to change their lifestyles so that they are around people who lift them up and won’t allow them to revert to their old addictions. Jesus told the story of a man who had an evil spirit removed from him but hadn’t allowed the Holy Spirit to fill him instead. The evil spirit came back and brought seven friends with it.
Above all, we can’t weed out the sin in our lives without the grace that God offers us. Call upon the Holy Spirit to be the master gardener of your soul!