Giant mushrooms!  Yep, that’s right.  That’s what you see.  That’s a real photo that I took yesterday of three giant mushrooms that are currently growing in my front yard and scaring my neighbors’ kids from coming near my property.

The strange thing is that:

a)     I’ve been in this house for more than 3 years now and I’ve never before had a problem with mushrooms

b)     Those mushrooms weren’t there at all last week.

c)      I saw a little baby mushroom start to come up 2 days ago, but I have no idea how they got so big so fast!

Just so you get some perspective on exactly how large those mushrooms are, I took a picture of one of the mushrooms next to a standard 16 oz bottle of water and another picture next to my size 11 running shoes.  WOW!

There’s a lesson to be learned here.  The lesson is about the inherent danger of sin and the way sin grows in our lives.  If you’re not careful, you may wake up one day and find yourself with a giant problem on your hands that came out of nowhere.

But I have never had a problem with that kind of big sin before.

It doesn’t matter.  I never had a problem with giant mushrooms – or even baby mushrooms – before either.  There’s always gotta be a starting point somewhere.  Don’t rely on the fact that you’ve never made a big mistake or had that big fall before.  There’s always a starting point for everything.

But I just checked last week and everything seemed fine.

It doesn’t matter.  The giant mushroom wasn’t in my yard last week either.  But that doesn’t mean that it won’t be there today.  King David never committed adultery, but that didn’t mean that he was invincible against its temptation the day he saw Bathsheba.  Last week was last week.  Don’t rely on the fact that you were clean last week.  That doesn’t matter.  Check your soul regularly; examine yourself and search your heart and your motives as often as you can.  The giant mushrooms of sin can sprout at any time.

Ok, I see a small little sin potentially creeping up, but it’s still small so I have time.

NO WAY JOSE!  I went out of town on Monday morning and at the time, the mushroom sprout was barely noticeable to the naked eye.  When I returned back home on Tuesday night, it was enough to scare the daylights out of me.

Mushrooms grow fast and so too does sin.  If you see it starting to sprout, TAKE ACTION NOW!  Don’t wait for it to grow so large that it causes serious damage.  It will.  100% it will.  It always does and it always will.  If you don’t take action when it’s small, you will regret it soon.

Right now, there are baby mushrooms sprouting up in people’s lawns all over.  But even more concerning are the baby mushrooms of sin that are sprouting in the hearts of God’s children.  They might be sprouts of envy or jealousy; sprouts of lust or desire; sprouts of greed or anger. Whatever the sprouts might be, my advice: TAKE ACTION NOW!

God’s Word is clear on the level of mushrooms that He wants His children to allow in their lives.

“But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.”  Ephesians 5:3

Not even a hint.

For discussion:  what can we do to protect ourselves from these mushrooms of sin in our lives?