Memory verse: Psalm 51:10- "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
When someone sees a opossum in their trash, they want to get rid of it. They can not stand the idea of a creature that would eat trash. They see the toothy mouth and rat-tail and think this can not be anything good.
The truth is, people judge the opossum as a whole. They know some get into trash, therefore they believe all are gross. In fact, the opossum is just an opportunist looking for an easy meal when it gets into the trash, but all we can think is all opossums must be gross.
If people would take the time to dig deeper they would learn that the opossum is in fact a good animal to have around and they have some super cool characteristics. The opossum is the only marsupial, a mammal that has a pouch where its young grow, in North America. They do not get rabies because their body temperature is naturally too low. They can withstand many snake bites and will in fact eat venomous snakes! To top it off they eat all kings of bugs, but in particular, the tick. Ticks are dangerous to us because they can give people Lyme Disease.
Now that you know more about the opossum, do you think they are good to have around? You may still find them off-putting, but you can't deny they are important to our ecosystem. Let me ask you a weird question; are you like the opossum in the trash? Are you doing things that other people see that may make them think that all Christians must not be very good?
If we are not careful, we can get a bad reputation like the opossum. Are you talking trash? Are you hanging out with people that trash your reputation? You might catch the opossum in the trash the only time it ever decides to get a quick meal. Unfortunately for us, one quick bad decision or word, can get us caught too. You see when we claim to love Jesus and follow Him, everything we do reflects who we are and who HE is.
The problem with getting into the trash, is even if we only go in once, we will still get stinky. Trash for us can be many things, like lying or being mean or stealing or just not hanging around who we should. Because that opossum gets in the trash , people tend to forget how awesome they actually are. That happens to us too. When we mess up, people tend to remember what we did. We have to work twice as hard to wash away the stink of what we did.
You will hear people say all the time, they do not go to church because someone there talks ugly or hangs out with the wrong people. Christians get this bad name becasue we get into the trash. The challenge for us is to not get into the trash in the first place. We do not want to be the one to keep someone from Jesus. We don't want to have to defend ourselves or have someone else defend us every time we turn around; like I'm defending the opossum and its awesome characteristics.
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