Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - What Are You Avoiding?

My wife will tell you that one of the things I dislike the most is taking care of dirty dishes. They stink. They have everybody's leftover lasagna on them, and they take up space in the sink. In fact, this actually described how our sink looked yesterday. Each time the sink is full of dirty dishes, my family makes a choice - we either ignore them for the time being or we clean them.

In John 15:2 , Jesus says, "He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." The unspoken message of this verse is the fact that our refusal to respond in obedience and faith to God's pruning process could keep us from becoming as fruitful as we need to be throughout the rest of our spiritual journey. Or to use our illustration, it's our refusal to wash the dirty dishes in our lives, those things that we would rather avoid at all costs until we absolutely have to face them head on.

And it's different for everybody. For some, it's a lingering addiction. For others, it's the refusal to give up some form of harmful entertainment, or it's the continual mismanagement of finances. And still for others, it's an unwillingness to forgive an offense. Whatever the case may be with you, rest assured that God desires to use your life in greater ways than He has up until now. But you can delay His work in and through your life by refusing to clean up the dirty dishes in the sink of your life as God points them out to you.

Set aside a couple of minutes today and ask yourself this question: "What are the 'dirty dishes' that need my immediate attention so that God can continue to use me for His purposes in the lives of others?"