Stones in your shoes?

Have you ever tried to walk with stones in your shoes?  It makes the walk very unpleasant and depending on the size of the stone it can make the walk nearly impossible.

There are several mounds of dirt in our neighborhood---the last house is being built, so as you would think those large dirt mounds have been calling out very loudly to my five year old grandson, beckoning him to come down and climb to the top and slide all the way down, again and again.

Every time he would climb to the top and come down he would let me know that he had stones in his shoes.

Think how our sins make our walk with God unpleasant! The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us:

...Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us (12:1).

And we all know that if we IGNORE those pesky stones in our shoes they eventually will cause some serious damage to our soft-tender feet.  And the worst thing that can happen is that we "get used" to those pesky stones and we learn to live with them.

This is one of the scariest verses in the entire Bible:

Holding on to faith and a good conscience, some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith (1Tim. 1:19).

 Christians while we are secure in our salvation it is possible to wound our consciences, and in so doing shipwreck our precious faith. I've seen many believers walking with stones in their shoes and don't even realize the damage that they are doing to their own feet.

Father we know that we can always restore our relationship with you through repentance and confession---help us to keep our feet soft and tender, and allow your word and the work of the Holy Spirit to have its way in our lives. Keep us from wounding our consciences and making our faith powerless.