Don't let sin spread

“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven that you may be a new lump…”
1 Corinthians 5:6,7a

Well Spring has sprung. Area garden stores and nurseries are working hard to meet the early demand for tomato, pepper and other various plants so that people are able to plant their gardens. I am like a lot of people this year and took a gamble and planted a little earlier than normal. Usually April 15 is the earliest that I will even consider planting tomatoes or peppers, but with the mild winter and no more cold weather being forecast, I planted a couple of weeks ago. There is something satisfying about planting a garden. There is a sense of satisfaction in being able to grow what you are eating. I am willing to make a wager that more people this year will be gardening after we have seen the shortages at the grocery stores. To me nothing compares to the smell of the freshly plowed earth and the purr of a diesel tractor.  I enjoy thinking about what to plant in each row so that each plant doesn’t shade the other out from the sunlight and plants with vines aren’t overlapping each other. I look forward to watering the plants and seeing their growth from day to day. Then comes the harvest time and what you have worked for all summer, it is time to eat. Now that little paragraph makes gardening sound great doesn’t it? It is a piece of cake, right? Yea, I did leave out one little thing. The most dreaded of all of the garden chores, weeding. Wow, I just got the chills typing that word. It is the most time consuming, back breaking, labor intensive part of a garden. It is also one of the most critical parts. You can have the most beautifully tilled land. You can plant the healthiest plants on the face of the earth. You can put down all of the right fertilizer, but unless you get rid of the weeds, you will end up with a mess and your harvest will suffer. You cannot allow even one weed. Why, because one weed will quickly turn into a dozen. Then that dozen will turn into hundreds. 

In our Scripture, Paul is using leaven as an example of how sin can quickly spread in our lives. If we don’t get rid of it, one sin will quickly lead to another sin. No, there is no way that we can ever be sinless here on earth. However, Jesus does offer us a solution for our need to get rid of sin in our lives. It is called forgiveness. It is called repentance.  It is us asking Jesus to cleanse us of our mistakes. It is all possible because of what we just celebrated, Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is possible through asking Him to be our Lord and Savior and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. 
 Don’t allow sin to take root in your heart. Don’t allow sin to spread in your life. Confess it to Jesus and asking Him to forgive you and to help you to turn from it.