Is that a limp I see?

It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe. (Mohammed Ali)

You can’t whitewash your sins and get by with it; you find mercy by admitting and leaving them. (Proverbs 28:13 MSG)

I once heard a sermon about the pebble in one's shoe. The longer you ignored it was there, the more damage it caused. It would cause a sore where it caused pressure, wearing a hole in your sock, and eventually breaking down your skin. The quicker one sat down to remove the pebble, the sooner one would be relieved of the pressure. The moral was that all sin is like a pebble in one's shoe - the sooner one confesses it, turning away from it, the quicker one would have the 'pressure' or 'weight' of the sin removed from their lives. The damage that little sin could cause was significant if not repented!

The pebble actually didn't give the one with it in their shoe any sense of comfort. Trying to just move it out of the way didn't do the trick. Eventually the pebble would move into a position that caused the discomfort to return again and again. Sin has a way of increasing our discomfort whenever it is repeated time and time again. As so many of us have done, we 'confess' our sin, seeking God's forgiveness, but we never repent of it. We leave the 'pebble' right there in our shoe - it just moved a bit, so it isn't making us uncomfortable at the moment. 

Confession is only one part of dealing with that 'pebble' we call sin. Small as it may be, we need to remove it completely from our lives if we are to be free of its return and its discomfort. The 'pebble' isn't huge right now - but given enough time, the 'pebble' feels like a bolder in our shoe! We limp along because of the discomfort it causes us, and we aren't going to have any relief until we finally sit down long enough to dig it out, cast it away, and finally rid ourselves of it! We knew the pebble was there - we just didn't want to take the time or effort to deal with it as we should have.

It is frequently the case that we don't deal with our 'little sins' until they become bigger ones. When they bring enough discomfort into our lives, we finally take a long, hard look at what is causing the discomfort. The 'pebble' created bigger problems than we wanted to deal with at the time, but we are now forced to deal with not only the pebble, but the results of ignoring it. All sin - big or small - brings a certain amount of discomfort into our lives. The quicker we deal with the 'pebble', not just by confessing it is there and moving it out of the way for a while, but by ridding ourselves of it (repentance), the less we will have to deal with a 'limp' in our spiritual walk. Just sayin!