This past November the Nelson family welcomed our 4th member, a beautiful baby boy named Nehemiah.  It was a crazy time in our family as we began trying to switch from 1 child to 2 and balance the oncoming finals for my last semester at Midwestern.  Honestly, we could have planned it better but our Father provided immensely in that time.

and then the news came…..

One morning I came home from the hospital to attend to our child who was being cared for by a good friend and she, being as sweet as she could be, said the words “I think you have mice”.  She went on to explain the experience that she had the night before with “our [little] friends” (this is a name my wife and I use to refer to our mice).  Once my wife found out her fear of mice, that I was not aware of, became very apparent and as I husband I went in to action.  As soon as I had time I went to the closest hardware store and quickly became overwhelmed with the diverse selection.  In the end I decided on 4 “no-touch” or humane traps, my thinking is both my wife and I could dispose of these without seeing the mouse inside.  I will just tell you now they are [absolutely] useless!

2 days after we found out this news my mother and father in-law came into town to help us as we transitioned home and my Father in-law went in to overdrive.  We went back to the hardware store and went old school, snap traps, steel-wool, and peanut butter (I will not do poison); needless to say it worked!  Quickly, we began to catch and dispose of multiple mice and figure out there points of entry and where they were going for food.  In discussions around our house I described my tactics of mice hunting as precision strikes whereas my father in-law carpet bombed our house.  After they left I continued the war and have become worse (or better depending on how you look at it) than my father in-law.  I went to my neighbors to inform them of our problem, since our houses are conjoined.  Much  to my chagrin they let me know that they have had the problem for a year or so.  My neighbor explained there infiltration, destruction, and frustration that they have brought.  We spoke about the humane traps and I tried to stay calm (blood boiling) knowing that they have had this problem for so long without informing us.  The hunt continues, we have killed 15 mice to this point and I sure that there more to come.

[So] Why did I write this?

All of us have [lil] friends in our lives that the Bible calls sin but most of us do not have the correct approach to dealing with it.  We replicate my neighbors (and most professing Christians) actions by:

• Not communicating the problem
• Hiding the issue (for whatever reason)
• Diminishing the affect on yourself and others around you
• Letting the sin eventually overtake you and just giving in.

You could replicate my initial actions (and many well meaning Christ followers) by:

• Put some safeguards into place
• Try to deal with the problem using my limited knowledge.
• Become embarrassed by something that so many people deal with.
• Not believe that there is a solution to my problem [the Gospel]

Finally, you could take the correct action like my Father in-law and eventually I adopted by:

• Destroying the [sin] in anyway we could (notice the we)
• Keeping focused on the problem [sin] at hand without becoming myopic
• Consulting others that have overcome this problem
• Staying vigilant

Ultimately, we all have to make this decision and I realize that these friends of ours do not affect only me in a vacuum but so many other people as well.

What do you think?

Please checkout: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you”