Two Ways We Can Live

By nature, I’m a messy person. But the irony is that I don’t like messes, even though I make a lot of them. I’ll let messes build up, and then eventually I’ll start cleaning up out of frustration. In contrast, my wife, Cathe, is very neat and tidy. She doesn’t allow messes to pile up because she’s always cleaning.

So we have two approaches to cleaning: the Greg way and the Cathe way. The Greg way is to never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. If there’s some dust, sweep it under the rug. And if you want to get rid of something, just throw it in a drawer.

The Cathe way is to clean the rug and clean underneath the rug. The Cathe way is to organize the drawer you throw something into.

It’s the same way with life. There are two ways we can live. We can let messes build up into bigger problems, or we can constantly see our need to be cleansed. We all sin. Maybe some of us sin more than others, but one sin is enough to separate us from God.

The Bible says, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth” (1 John 1:8 NLT). So if you say, “I’m a good person. I don’t sin,” then you’re deceiving yourself. We’re all sinners because we’ve broken God’s laws and have fallen short of His standards.

Yet the next verse offers this promise: “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness” (verse 9 NLT).

You don’t have to clean up your life to come to God. Rather, come to God, and He will clean up your life.