Is Your Life Lumpy?

I Corinthians 5:6

Do you not know that a little leaven, leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.

There is a story of the Princess and the Pea. Someone puts a pea under her mattress and she can’t sleep. She doesn’t know what it is, but something is different in her life. So they keep adding mattresses, but she still can’t sleep because of a pea. It’s not until they remove this small pea that she is able to rest. Now this is an exaggerated homily on life, but the moral to the story is powerful. It’s the little things that we allow people to sneak into our lives that disturb our rest.

In 1 Corinthians chapter five, a follower of Christ in the Corinthian church was having sex with his daddy’s wife. What made it so bad was that they were coming to church like it wasn’t anything wrong. It had caused the church get a cancerous lump which caused the church leader/founder to lose his rest. The Apostle Paul told them a little leaven (yeast) messes up the whole lump. One unchecked/unaccountable person in your church, on your team, in your staff, or in your family, can mess it up for everybody!

In Joshua chapter Six, the Israelites had just defeated Jericho and were up against a 14th seed in the tournament bracket and Israel was a number one seed. The town was so small it had two letters in its name “AI.” Israel didn’t even have all their soldiers to suit up for this battle. When the 30K soldiers went out against this little town they were routed by AI and ran back home. Joshua was devastated. He told God if I knew we were going to be embarrassed like this we would have stayed and settled on the other side of the Jordan. God told him to Get up! He told him that if one of his members, staff, and teammates named Achan hadn’t hidden that “pea under his mattress” they wouldn’t have been routed. The “Pea under his mattress” was the devoted things that God told them not to take from Jericho. Achan snuck it in his house and hid it under his mattress. He put the whole nation in danger for what he hid under his mattress.

We can put our organizations, families, churches, teams in jeopardy in two ways:

1. Who we put on our mattress. As believers we have a different standard than unbelievers. We believe that Sexual immorality is when you have sex with anybody that is not your spouse. When we continue to do otherwise and walk around bragging about it, it jeopardizes the rest of the team. What is just as deadly is when you know you have mattress issues, but walk around like nothing is wrong.

2. What we put under our mattress. There are some things that God has revealed to you through his word that are unclean for you, but you are still holding on to them. What is it in your house that you know God is not pleased with that could be destroying your peace and threatening your chances for victory?

Solution: Be careful of lumpy people who sneak stuff into the camp that you know is forbidden. This doesn’t mean the people on the outside of your circle who do not hold to your values that you don’t associate with them. No, this is just for those who are already members of your team, but they are living contrary to your beliefs and are putting you in jeopardy and are causing you to lose. Put them out in hopes that they get it together or you will continue to lose rest.

Dear God, give me discernment so I can find all of my “peas.” The ones I put under my mattress and the ones other people snuck in while I was sleeping. Help me to make adjustments before I lose my bracket positioning and be defeated by a low seeded team. Please God remove all my leaven.

In Jesus Name.

Amen.