Boys, I’ve brought in one of the favorite things I own: my black powder rifle. I got this rifle a few years ago and it is very valuable to me. Now I use this rifle from time to time. It’s a real rifle that shoots real bullets. These are the bullets that it shoots [show round ball]. They’re round lead balls. My rifle uses a kind of gunpowder called black powder.
Because this rifle is so valuable to me, I try to take good care of
it. I keep it up in a safe place when not in use. When I do use it, I take
care not to drop it or bump it into things or scratch it somehow. When
I shoot it, I have to clean it often and right away when I’m done. It is
important that I keep my rifle clean.
As I shoot, residue from the black powder builds up in the barrel.
It doesn’t take long before that residue has an effect on my shooting.
After only a few shots the accuracy of my rifle will begin to fall; the
bullets will hit farther from the bull’s eye.
Our thoughts are like that too. If we don’t keep our thoughts clean we too will begin to miss the mark. Our thoughts affect the way we speak and act. It doesn’t take much time of not keeping our thoughts clean before our words start being unclean too; we start saying things that we ought not.
What’s even worse, though, is that if I don’t clean my rifle soon after I’m done shooting it, that black powder residue will start to eat away at the inside of my barrel. While I can later clean out the residue, I can not fix the damage once it is done.
Our thoughts are the same way. Unclean thoughts eat away at our insides leaving us with damaged hearts and minds. Once that damage is done we can not fix it.
But the difference between us and my rifle is that even though we can’t fix the damage we let happen to our hearts, there is Someone who can: Jesus.