Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Clogged arteries and pipes

I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities (Isaiah 1:25).

Like many of you, I have elevated cholesterol. The doctors tell me that cholesterol is a fatty substance that sticks to the inside of blood vessels, clogging them; this makes the heart work hard to pump blood throughout the body. If left untreated, high cholesterol can lead to heart attacks or strokes.

I have lived in some houses that must have had elevated cholesterol. Many of these homes are older than I am, with plumbing lines prone to getting clogged up. Years of sticky waste coat the inside of the pipes, sometimes causing sinks and bathtubs to drain slowly. Even with the use of drain cleaners, there are times when the flow of water stops completely, requiring a call to the plumber for help.

Sin is like the cholesterol that clogs your blood vessels and the sticky waste that clogs your plumbing. Sin is something that you cannot completely avoid. No matter how carefully you eat, cholesterol is always laying deposits in your arteries; there will always be garbage that goes down the drain and gets stuck in a pipe somewhere. And no matter how hard you try, you sin every day—you let opportunities to do good slip away unused, you speak words that are needlessly hurtful, you neglect praying to God and studying His word because you let other activities use up your time.

And the effects of sin are deadly. Clogged pipes prevent you from washing clothes, taking a shower, and flushing waste away—clogged pipes make your home an unhealthy place to live. Clogged arteries are even more dangerous—a stroke can leave you helpless and unable to communicate, while a heart attack can kill you. But sin is the deadliest problem of all—it chokes the life from your soul, and results in a hellish afterlife.

You can treat cholesterol through diet and medication. A plumber can tear out old pipelines and replace them with new ones. And there is an effective treatment for sin as well. Jesus can flood your soul with spiritual health, no matter how badly sin has clogged things up. Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross of atonement, can free you from old, clinging sins and fill your inner self with a new vitality. Don’t put off treating your condition a moment longer; pray to Jesus for spiritual health before sin chokes all life from you.

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