Mopping Up

 I once heard of a mental hospital that had devised an unusual test to determine when patients were ready to go back into the world. They brought the candidates for release into a room where a tap was turned on, sending water pouring out over the floor. Next they handed the patient a mop and told him to mop up the  water. If the patient had a firm enough grasp of reality to turn off the tap before mopping up the water, he was ready to go out into society. But if he started mopping up the water without turning off the tap, they knew that more treatment was needed.
 You and I would never miss such an obvious step as shutting off the tap before mopping the floor. But the fact is that many Christians live their lives in a way that is, from a spiritual point of view, equally absurd.
 Each of us as believers has been given the mop of God‘s truth. We’ve  been told to use it to help mop up the evil in the world around us. But we can only be useful if we first have enough sense to shut off the flow of evil that pours into our own hearts from the outer arena of battle that the Bible calls the “world” and from the inner arena it calls the “flesh”.

 “Live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit.  Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.”   Galatians 5:16