Remove It Already! :: Deeper Devotion

By Glenn Ansley

1 Corinthians 15:56, 57
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Kristie and I had the windows open last Saturday to usher the fall weather into our house. It was one of those days when the air is so crisp you can smell it. Along with our windows, we opened up the door to our patio. I was working on the computer in a pair of old jeans with a hole in the knee. I’m not exactly sure how the yellowjacket found its way inside my jeans, but it did. And it stung me right below the knee on the inside of my left leg. (This wasn’t something I enjoyed). For next two days I continually nursed my wound with several different ointments.

Last night, after gawking at the still inflamed area around my wound, Kristie took a needle and a pair of tweezers to my leg and extracted the stinger left behind by my little friend. All the ointment in the world wasn’t going to soothe the pain as long as I still had the stinger under my skin.

Treating the symptom never neutralizes the source of your problem. This seems simple enough to understand, but then again, I’m the one who walked around with a stinger in my leg for an entire weekend. We do this sort of thing more often than you probably realize. In a moment of weakness, we drop our spiritual shields and one of Satan’s flaming arrows catches us off guard. Instead of removing the foreign vessel from our bodies, we try to cover it up with anything that will help it to “feel better.”

I wonder what type of “stinger” has gotten beneath your flesh this week… this month? Have you grown weary of trying to sooth the pain yet? I challenge you to give it up. Ask the Lord to remove it for you. There was a fair bit of pain involved in the extraction process of my stinger too, but the lasting result is sure to be better than your current situation. Stop treating your symptoms and remove the source before it spreads.

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