Pulling out the root

Recently, God showed me something very essential in understanding my struggle with uncleanness in my life. I was actually preaching when I had this thought and used it in my sermon - the result in people's life was powerful.

God showed me a garden with plants growing here and there. As in (almost) every garden, there were weeds that needed to be pulled out. I remember that as a kid, I used to just snap of the weed where it comes out of the ground, thinking that this would take of the problem. When my mum found out, she quickly pointed out to me that snapping off the weed would not solve the problem, because I was leaving the root in the ground. The result would only be that the weed would grow back. She showed me how to pull out the weed with root and all.

Our struggle with sin in general and pornography in particular is like this. We often snap off the weed, believing that we've taken care of the problem. The weed is gone - at least, it cannot be seen - and we go on our merry way, thinking we've removed sin from our lives. After a little while, however, it grows back. We fall back into sin and wonder what went wrong - had we not removed it? We snap it off again and repeat the cycle until we become frustrated, discouraged, or even depressed.

But God is telling us that we need to pull out the root, not just snap of the weed. He wants us to take care of the root problem - and the root is in the soil of our heart. Our hearts need to be dug up so that God can take care of whatever it is in our hearts that needs to be changed. We need to be willing - if necessary with somebody else - to let God dig up the soil of our hearts, bring the roots of this sin to the surface, so that He can remove it - for good.

That process is painful...but it's the only way.