Sticking power

The other day I was writing names on some yellow "sticky notes" and affixing them to student's desks so that I could remember names.  It was not long before they were on the floor, on the closet doors, on notebooks, everywhere except where I intended them to be. I had to adhere them with tape. I thought of how useless they were to me and how they did not accomplish what I intended.

This morning however, I located a name tag from the hospital.  For three weeks my husband and I had to wear these when we visited my father in law.  Sometimes we would leave for dinner and come back so we had two or three in one day.  They were on our car console, on our restroom mirror, on our books, on our umbrella and yes, this morning I found one on my bible. 

What I found was that the yellow sticky notes had no sticking power...none!  You didn't have to peel them off, they slid off by themselves.  However, the hospital name tags had real sticking power.  When I removed it from the front of my bible, I saw some of the maroon of my bible peel right off with it.  It stuck right to that name tag.  When I looked at the adhesive on the name tag-you got it!  It was maroon! 

I thought of how sin has "sticking power." Some sin seems to just stick!  Someone, somewhere convinced us that our sin was unforgivable and in doing so, they gave "our sin" sticking power.  The thing to remember is that when we give that sin sticking power, it peels a little more of us away just like it did my bible cover. 

The bigger thing to remember is that if our sin was unforgivable, then Christ died in vain. Christ died to take our place, to free us from that sin, to give us an opportunity to receive eternal life. 

So you can believe that your sin has sticking power and allow it to tear away at you or like the yellow sticky notes, you can believe that the minute you ask for forgiveness, it is washed away with no sicking power at all. 

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, teh benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eterlan life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:22-23