Going to the Dump

Spotsylvania County, Virginia, boasts of the best dump around.  It is an amazing place. I have friends from out of state who have shown intense jealously for our first-class trash site. For folks who do a lot of gardening, tree-chopping or just cleaning out the garage of years of clutter, this is the best place to be.  I know it’s showing my age when having a good dump is a luxury!  Why is this dump so amazing?  It’s big, organized and clean.  It has 8 bays for you to drive up and dump your stuff into the eternal smasher of things ------there’s a place to put chemicals and refrigerators, newspaper recycling, leaf disposal, a large Goodwill truck with a full-time staff member, and a place where they mulch your trees and wood (which you can have for free! Just load up your truck). Any given morning at 8:00 a.m., you will see 10-12 cars lined up waiting for the gate to open.  This year we cleaned out our garage, hauling three van-loads of stuff for the smasher.  You can see my husband, Darren, on the left.    When it goes, everything is pulverized and pushed into an eternal darkness which we will never see again. Now, this dump is selective; only members of Spotsylvania county are allowed to use it, as our tax dollars fund it.  It is a special privilege.  
We love the dump!

   Now, imagine Darren and myself a week later driving back to dump to look for that stuff!  Imagine us, covered in stench and decay, trying to get that stuff back. People would look at us like we were crazy! A dump is not a place to return and retrieve our stuff—our past.

That’s what we often do with sin.  The sin that Christ has taken for us on the cross, covered in His blood, given the “FORGIVEN” stamp of love, is often the thing that we go back to.  How could we do that? That’s like going back to the dump.  But yes, we spend sleepless nights rehashing sins of the past, worrying about guilt, feeling that God somehow loves us less…..we forget that it has all been put in the eternal dump of heaven; and once sin is covered, we are not to go back looking for it. God placed your sin as far as the East is from the West, and in the deepest ocean.  God even gave us an example of this: Israel.  They longed to go back to Egypt (also an imagery for sin) when they were in the wilderness.  After all God did to deliver them and give them the spoils of Pharaoh, some of them wanted to be slaves back in a land where they were abused. They wanted the dump lifestyle again. WOW!  Let us not follow their example.
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When you are tempted to dredge up old sins that God has forgiven, use these verses for strength:
I John 1:9  “ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and
purify us from all unrighteousness”
Isaiah 43:25-26 “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, 
and remembers your sins no more.” 
God never goes back to the dump.  He looks not back to Egypt. God asks us not to go there either. God chooses to forget our sin -----why would we not follow His example in accepting this fully?  God is a forward-leading Father, not a backwards-leading dictator.  Start to see yourself as God sees you ---- justified in His sight.  Justified means “Just as if I’d never sinned”.   Hide these verses in your heart ---- they are great treasures!  Don’t be a dumpster-diver; be a kingdom citizen, with head held high, knowing that God has forgiven you and given you great riches from His kingdom.  Now go tell someone else that they are forgiven too!  

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