Feeding Your Pet

from here.

Every one of us has a pet sin.  Whether you believe it or not, it's true. 

Some of our pets are like mice.  We tell ourselves and everyone else that they aren't there.  But they follow us around, eating the food we leave out for them and leaving droppings on the counter.  Others have pet sins like horses.  They house them, feed them, groom them, and give them plenty of room to run.  But no matter how much they dress it up and comb it's mane, it's still sin. 

The crazy thing about sin is that we can so clearly see the sins of others, as it they are parading them around town on a leash.  However, we continue to ignore the sin that is running circles around our own feet.  Matthew 7:3 says "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but don't notice the log in your own eye?"  Our sins are our pets.  We feel very personally about them.  But God calls us to be like Jesus Christ, and that means we are to strive for a sin free temple. 

Oftentimes, as Christians, God will convict our hearts about our sin and we will try to turn against it.  It reminds me of a stray cat that we let hang out around our house.  At first we don't really want it around, but eventually we get used to it.  Maybe we even get a little attached to it.  One day the cat carries in some dead creature and the stench of it makes us sick, so we run the cat off.  But as the days or weeks or months pass, we start missing that cat.  So we leave the back door cracked open and we set out some food, waiting for an opportunity to pet the soft fur of that old sin again.  Too many times we have a soft spot for our sin.  We easily forget about the stench that comes with it.  There is joy in sin for a season, but the stench of death will always come back eventually.

Don't make friends with your sins.  Don't let them become your pets.

Dealing with our own sin is not a game of comparison.  We are all guilty.  "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  Romans 3:23

I think a lot of times we like to hold our sins up to the sins of others and point out that ours are lesser.  But that, of course, isn't true.  Sin is sin.  In the eyes of our Lord and Savior, all sin is condemnable.  We justify our drinking habit by pointing out that at least we don't drink as much as so-and-so.  Or we downplay our promiscuity by comparing our stats to those of another.  It's always that log in our own eye.  I don't think God looks at us and our sins like a pie graph, considering our general goodness in the light of the whole.  God works on a personal level, closely examining each heart and the content thereof.

We are each responsible for our own sin and the only accurate way for us to gauge our own heart is to hold it up the the light of the Word of God.  

    Our standard should not be the world.  

It should be the Word.