Personal Pets

I’ve never had a pet. My mother always said that our family was too busy to properly care for an animal. Which, looking back, was probably true. That didn’t stop my sister and I from asking for something furry and cuddly to love on.

I always wanted a kitten. A ginger striped kitten. There was something about the quietness and serenity of cats that appealed to me.

Despite my lack of physical pets, I've had a couple of pet sins that I liked to keep around that had no business in my life. And if you look closely at yourself, you’ve probably got some personal ‘pets’ hanging around too.

Let me explain. You know that stronghold that’s been over your life for as long as you can remember? That guilty pleasure that you occasionally dabble in from time to time? Those practices that you keep that make you cringe whenever your pastor brings them up in his messages?

Yeah, those. You know what I’m talking about. I consider those to be some personal pets that need to be put down.

It could be Gossip. Porn. Fornication. Lying. Stealing. The pets come in all shapes and sizes and forms. All they need is a happy home, and they’ll stay as long as you let them.

Many of us can kick out other sins with a quickness, but take great strains to keep our little ‘pet sins’ hanging around in our lives. We take them out and stroke them, feed their desires, and give them attention.

But those pet sins that we dote on are actually eating us out of our heavenly house and home. They’re snapping up our blessings and blocking out the room that we need to grow to greater heights in God.

It’s time for us to take a stand and put out those personal pet sins! No matter how attached to them we’ve become, we have to stay strong and turn them loose. We can not put anything above our relationship with God.

Yeah, our fleshly hearts may hurt having to let go of things that we found pleasure in. However, the joy we will feel as God renews and refreshes our spirits will more than compensate for the loss.

Verse of the Day: Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. I John 2:15