Do You Need an Extraction?

September 23, 2015

One day I noticed a toenail causing a little irritation on my big toe. I was on my feet a good part of that day, and before long the irritation turned to pain. By that evening my toe was throbbing with pain and felt like I had a needle pushing into my toe. I finally got home late that night, pulled off my boots and socks to inspect the toe. It was red, swollen, and, well, I probably shouldn’t go into more specific details. The pain radiated upward from my toe, seemingly all the way up to ends of my hair!

It was time to pull out the pedicure instruments and begin the arduous task of performing an extraction of the ingrown nail before a serious infection set in. Surprisingly, it was not as arduous a task as I had anticipated. In fact, it only took a couple of seconds to slide a cuticle pusher around the edges of the nail to remove the miniscule sliver that had been causing my toe to hurt all day long. I felt immediate relief. Of course I had to make sure to clean and protect it, and by morning the redness, swelling and pain were gone.

I began thinking of the similarities between that rogue, miniscule sliver of nail and sin.

If no action was taken to remove that sliver of nail, my toe would have become badly infected and the pain would have been unbearable. In the same way, if no action is taken to repent and seek forgiveness for sin, the more pain and separation from God and others it causes. Eventually the unconfessed sin has separated us from God and poisoned every aspect of our lives, hurting us and causing our attitudes and actions to hurt others.

But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear. Isaiah 59:2

When the cuticle pusher released that sliver of nail I experienced instant relief from the pain it had been causing me throughout the day and evening. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, we confess and repent, immediately that sin is removed, we receive God’s forgiveness, and our relationship with Him is restored, and the weight of that sin is lifted.

Do you need a sin extraction?