Name it and ditch it.

I’m brushing my teeth when I hear her scream from the other room. I close my eyes and wait, since a scream from Heidi could mean any range of things–from just a silly look from brother to a bloodied busted lip. I wait. Her feet patter into the bathroom.

“Bruh-bruh bit me!” Uh oh. Brother knows the line and knows how to toe it. He’ll open his mouth and get near Heidi, taunting her without touching her, just to get a rise.  He follows immediately, protesting.

“No I didn’t! I didn’t bite her!”  I can see the wet mark on her shirt. I look him in the eye.

“I didn’t bite her … I just …  I sawed her …” He pauses and adds, “…with my teeth.”

I display valiant self-control by not laughing out loud.

“You sawed her with your teeth?”

He smiles. “Yeah!”

Needless to say, the same disciplinary measures that apply to biting are applied to “sawing with teeth.”

Call it what you want. It’s still a bite. Amen?

Oh but don’t we do that? Don’t we dance around our sin and use fancy language to skirt real confession?

• “I’m just not really feeling appreciated enough by others.”  Pride.
• “I’m just having a hard time because they have so much and I don’t.”  Envy.
• “I’m just struggling with getting frustrated all the time with my kids.” Anger.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate admitting sin as much as you do (probably more, unfortunately), but more than that I just hate sin. I hate that it binds us, steals from us, keeps us living at arm’s length from God and from each other.

But we can’t be freed from sin until we confess it. And so often we’re so scared of calling it what it is, amen?

We’re staring at our toes before God and each other, shifting from one foot to the other, saying that we just “sawed them with our teeth.”

Don’t we avoid the biblical words because they just sound so bad? “Bite” sounds so bad, almost as bad as “jealousy” or “fits of wrath.” But the works of the flesh do have names, God’s spelled it out for us. Why?

So we can name it and ditch it. 

We’ve all hear the “name it and claim it” movement. Let’s start a better one: Name it and ditch it.

I recently had a refreshingly honest conversation where we did just that.

Named it, ditched it, and prayed it’d never come back. 

Isn’t it freeing? Why because Scripture says,

“When we confess our sin He is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

But if the confession isn’t real neither is the cleansing! We don’t find true freedom until we call it what it is. Scripture also says,

“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” (James 5:16 NLT)

Don’t we want to be healed? Cleansed? Given great power to see wonderful results? We might find more power when we quit dancing around the sin and start ditching it instead. Amen?

Whew! I didn’t mean for this to be such a hard-hitting post … just know, girlfriends, I write this first and foremost to myself. I’ve used fancy words to dance around a lot of sin …

But I’d really rather name it and ditch it instead.

You too?

{Question: What sin have you “renamed” in your life? Greed? Gluttony? Pride? I hate those words as much as you, but so appreciate your honesty and desire to know Him more.  Thanks, friends, for reading, and growing alongside me. Bless you!}