Megan Breedlove

“Toe” the Line

Megan Breedlove June 3, 2013 No Comments

The way my husband Phil tells it, it went something like this: Phil and the kids were at his parents’ house in Houston for a visit (I was teaching at the Colorado Christian Writers Conference in, well, Colorado). Phil and his dad were sitting on the couch talking while Phil’s mom got dinner ready in the kitchen. Timmy, wanting to be where Grandma was, was getting underfoot. So Phil removed him from the kitchen to the adjoining living room.

Before I finish the story, I should also tell you that we have been working on teaching Timmy the meaning of the word “no”. It had been going well that weekend, right up until Timmy got removed to the living room. He toddled back toward the kitchen.

“No, Timmy!” my husband instructed.

Timmy paused right there at the dividing line between the carpet of the living room and the linoleum of the kitchen floor. He stood there rocking back and forth from one foot to the other. And then, ever so slowly, he extended one toe and touched the linoleum with it.

At that point, my husband jumped up, hauled Timmy back to the couch, and said, “Time out, Timmy.”

Timmy had disobeyed.

But it was only one toe, we might be tempted to protest. It’s not like he went all the way into the kitchen.

That’s the problem. We excuse our children’s disobedience by saying that it’s not that big a deal. Worse yet is the fact that we do the same thing regarding our disobedience to God. We act like sticking a toe over the line ought to be okay with Him.

I didn’t have an affair; I just flirted a little, we rationalize.

Yes, I was impatient. But look at all I have to put up with!

So I don’t ever read my Bible regularly. At least I know what it says.

We look at our disobedience and say that one toe over the line shouldn’t be that big a deal, when in reality, God doesn’t want us to be anywhere close to the line. Jesus had lots to say to those who thought their sin was no big deal. He told them that even those who are guilty of “little” sins are in fact guilty of the “big” ones as well.

Flirting is already being unfaithful. Being impatient is being selfish. Neglecting God’s Word is disrespect and disobedience.

Is there something in your life right now that’s sin, for which you have been making excuses? Have you sinned in a way that you’re trying to pretend is no big deal?

Lest you say “no” too quickly, remember that we have all sinned, and if you’re not in this situation right now, you’ll be tempted to excuse or minimize your sin in the future. But instead of doing that—instead of acting like one toe over God’s line is no problem—let’s fall on our knees before God and repent. Let’s be sorry. Let’s turn from our sin.

No more excuses or minimizing, mom. No more.

John 15:22—“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” (ESV)

One Blade

Megan Breedlove May 6, 2013 3 Comments

Recently, I was having a stressful day. I had some things on my mind, and I was tired of doing child care. I told my husband I needed a break. He went outside and came back in a half hour later. “I weed-eated around the fence line, the shed, the swing set, and everything else out there,” he said, referring to the back yard. “Why don’t you go mow the rest?”

Lest you think my husband was being particularly insensitive, I must tell you that I actually enjoy mowing (except the detail work, which he had just taken care of). Phil knows I like the simple mindlessness of the work, the basic-labor kind of joy in pushing the mower up and down our quarter-acre back yard. I also like doing a task that’s going to stay done and looking nice for longer than 30 seconds after I complete it.

So I jumped at the chance to go mow. The kids followed me outside and played on the swing set while I mowed. Up and down. Back and forth. Watching the patch yet to be mowed growing smaller and smaller. I felt like I was truly accomplishing something.

At one point, I looked back over an area I had just mowed to make sure I got it all. I saw one long blade of grass sticking up in the midst of an otherwise-well-mowed section of lawn. I knew that one blade didn’t matter all that much, but I went back and mowed it down anyway. Why? Because I wanted to do the job right.

We’d all do well to take the same approach when uprooting sin from our lives. Yet too often, we leave one blade of sin sticking up, and we say to ourselves, Well, that’s good enough. But it isn’t. It’s not doing the job right.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we could be forgiven of some of our sins, or even most of them. He sacrificed Himself so all our sins could be forgiven. He did the job right. And aren’t we glad? Aren’t we grateful that everything we’ve done is forgiven, not just the things that wanted to lie down and die easily on the first pass over them?

Why, then, do we only take some of the sins in our life seriously enough to make sure they are mowed down? God has commanded us to be holy. Not “kind of” holy, not “sort of” holy, but completely holy. He even gives us a promise, through the apostle Paul, that if we don’t put sin to death in our lives, we will die, but if we do, we will live.

I want to live abundantly, and I bet you do too. But we can only do so to the extent we are willing to give up known sin. To put it to death. To mow it down. To the extent that we tolerate sin in our lives, we won’t fully live.

What sins are sticking up in your life right now? What sins have you been tolerating because you think they aren’t that big a deal, or because hey, at least you mowed the rest of them down?

Precious mom, mow the whole yard. Put to death every sin that you find in your life. If you think you’re done, ask God to point out anything else to put to death, and see what He shows you.

Your life may still look pretty good even with that one sin sticking up in the middle. But you won’t be as fully alive as you could be.

Go mow it down.

Romans 8:13—For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

Brushing Off the Crumbs

Megan Breedlove April 1, 2013 No Comments

Recently, I made two cheesecakes to take to a party. No, I couldn’t have chosen the easy way out and simply bought a couple of cheesecakes. I had to make them myself.

The actual recipe isn’t too hard, and I’ve used it before. The whole experience went pretty well, except for a minor glitch that had to do with my brand-new Springform pans.

I had never used that kind of pan before; previously, I had always bought prepared crusts. This time, I wanted to make my own. So I made the first cheesecake, then had to remove it from the bottom of the pan to slide it onto a serving tray so I could reuse the pan for the second cheesecake.

Everything went fine with the transfer of Cheesecake #1 to Platter #1. Mostly fine, that is. With all that jostling of the crust, some of the crumbs somehow—I still can’t remember how—wound up on top of the cheesecake.

“How am I going to get those crumbs off?” I asked my friend Rea, who was going to the party with me. “I can’t just blow them off.”

Rea came up with the idea of using my basting brush to gently brush the crumbs from the top of the cheesecake. That worked. Until I stepped in.

As Rea gently brushed the crumbs from the dessert, some of them fell onto the platter. I used my fingers to scoop the crumbs into my other palm, and then, for some inexplicable reason that still eludes me, I dumped them right back on the cheesecake.

There was a moment of confused silence before Rea said, “What did you do that for?”

“I don’t know,” I said, as puzzled as she was. And this devotion was born.

You see, what I did with those crumbs is just like what we sometimes do with sin. We realize there’s a problem, we get the sin brushed off of our lives, then we add it right back in.

What in the world was I thinking? we wonder, just as I wondered that day in my kitchen.

I hadn’t stopped to consider the options of where I could put the crumbs. I simply didn’t think about the ramifications of what I was about to do, and I dumped them right back where they came from.

Yep. That’s definitely what we do with sin. We just. Don’t. Think.

Whether we put the crumbs back on the cheesecake on purpose isn’t really the point. The point is that there they are, back where they shouldn’t be. Whatever our motives, we still messed up, undoing all the work that had just been done.

Have you ever been in that place, in terms of sin in your life? Where you got rid of it for a time, then found yourself right back in it?

Sure you have. We all have. That’s part of the insidious nature of sin. It can have a hold on us without our even realizing it.

So what do we do to make sure that we don’t sin without thinking? That we don’t just let the words come out of our mouth that shouldn’t have been said, or fail to do something we should have done, without even thinking about our actions?

We ask God to help us, and we ask regularly. We ask Him to warn us when we’re about to do something wrong. We take those areas in which we know we are prone to sin, and we put those areas to death by establishing plans for dealing with our wrongdoing and preventing further sin.

It’s hard. Believe me, I know. But I don’t want to put the crumbs right back on my cheesecake. You don’t either.

We want that cheesecake to look like it was supposed to.

Psalm 139:23-24—Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (ESV)