CALL IT WHAT IT IS

"Come check out our SPEEDY-SIZED stores!" the cheery announcer chirped on the Ace Hardware commercial my husband and I were watching the other night.


I scoffed out loud.  "Yeah, but that's just a nice way of saying 'Come check out our tiny hardware store that's easier to navigate than Home Depot or Lowe's because we have far less of a selection!'"


But I'm certainly guilty of sugar-coating myself.  I downplay my sin by calling it something more acceptable.  Maybe you do it, too.


But stubbornness is pride, even though we ask it to wear the more agreeable term "sticking to your guns."


And gossip is still gossip, even if you dress it up in a "prayer request."


And that growing friendship with the opposite sex?  It's not really "being there for someone while his marriage crumbles."  It's called a pre-affair, y'all.  


Let us look with honesty at our actions--at our sin.  Even the word "sin" seems a bit too much at times, as though "mistakes" and "weaknesses" feel a little less heavy.  

The beautiful news is that the story doesn't end with us broken over our sins, but with us being bound up by the One who forgives every one of them. 

We've got to call our sin what it is--and then bask in the joy that it's all been forgiven. 

Search me, O God, and know my heart,

test me and know my anxious thoughts.  

See if there is any offensive way in me

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:23-24