My Future little pack rat...hopefully not

I promise I will get on to some more serious things soon...but for now I have another story.

Today, Morgan told her first lie. She has just started talking with us (a little) and I asked her what happened to the box of brownies that was empty on the floor and she said "I don't know." I then asked her if she was lying to me and she pulled open the desk drawers and showed me where the brownies were.

I am brushing my teeth a minute ago and I see my red tooth brush that I thought I lost, stuffed down deep in the sink. I wonder who did that. Rod is going to be upset about that one.

Backing up a few days...I have been searching high and low for a missing dvd that I knew Morgan had taken and it needed to be turned in to the video store. She is not communicating enough for me to really find out where her dads western flick went to so I prayed to the Lord for the mind of a two year old. That He would help me to think like her and find the thing. After 3 days of searching I prayed again and was led upstairs to the old diaper wipe-warmer of hers (that I used for a week and decided my infant didn't need that kind of spoiling). I open it and presto...there was the missing dvd (Praise You Lord). I think she thought the wipe warmer maybe resembled a cd player. Two days ago, I go in her room and literally take her breakfast in bed because I was not finished with my bible study and I really needed to finish before she got going (I know I am horrible). Upon returning her room I look to check and see if she ate her breakfast and saw that once again the vent cover was not all the way in the floor. Yep...she stuffed breakfast down the vent. I am not sure what her fascination with stuffing food in the vents is...maybe she is already some sort of baby activist who wants to feed the roaches. I have no clue. I am starting to wonder if she doesn't want to hurt my feelings so she just hides the stuff in the vents (if you remember her recent oreo and cheese cracker episode where she stuffed them in the vents). I swear people we watch her, we really do. The vacuum, a permanent fixture in our home...a piece of modern furniture I like to think, stays out at all times so I can suck out the vents and etc. A force to be reckoned with, she is.

But back it up to the lie and all of the times I have vacuumed out the vents lately from my child "concealing her food", we are so like that with our sin and the origin of concealing our sins goes right back to the Garden.

Proverbs 28:13 says this:
13 He who conceals his sins does not prosper,
but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

The word for prosper in the Hebrew is salah and it basically means to gain victory, or to succeed. The word conceal means what you think it is the word Kasah and it means "to conceal, hide, keep secret...Sometimes signifies something hidden from view..."
It is the concept of covering or hiding your sins.

God's word is clear that "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Yet so often we choose to conceal and hide our sins and God's word says that in concealing our sins we will not be victorious.

When we choose to lie and sin and conceal we really make our comforts or the people we are lying to idols. We fear man instead of God so we sin against God and in not coming to Him in confession and repentance we begin to heap sin upon sin (Isa 30:1). What we would consider in our own human estimation to be mini-sins, become bigger and bigger when we don't come and be honest before a Holy God and repent. He hates all sin so nothing is really a small sin in His eyes. We may have a different degree of consequence for our sins but every sin causes us to miss the mark and need His grace that He will so freely give us.
As I have been seeking to really come before the Lord and examine myself before Him I have noticed how uncomfortable it is and I have been seeing my extreme need for His grace and mercy because He is so holy and I am only made holy because of Him. It is so sobering to really come clean with God over all of my known offenses and see the reality of how nothing good lives in me, that is, my sinful nature (Ro 7:18).

He is really the only good thing that I have going!
Psalm 16:2
I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."

Back to our comfort. We make comfort such an idol because plain and simple it is not comfortable to come and admit that you are wrong, that you are so sinful, and that you are depraved apart from Christ. Our pride just gets in the way. Sin is so progressive. Once you start to grade your sins a think a little lie hear and there is okay, or a little grudge, over indulgence, gossiping, worry, unchecked anger... when you just skim over those things it becomes easier to sin in what you might consider a bigger way. You become less sensitive to the Holy Spirit when your life lays unexamined and you remain unrepentant.

Yet God is true and His Word is clear that we will not prosper or live victoriously when we "stuff our pet sins down the vent" spiritually speaking. All that does is attract the roaches and we have a whole dirty mess on our hands.

When we confess our sins and seek the heart of God, He is faithful. Aren't you glad our forgiveness hinges on His faithfulness?

So deal with your stuff before it deals with you. He is for us and our glorious liberation in Christ Jesus.