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As my daughter slept I received a reminder of an important spiritual theme; we need to learn how to let it go. The first song I heard was by Randy Travis and the title is called “Digging Up Bones”.

Here are the lyrics, let them teach, “Yeah tonight I’m sitting at home alone diggin’ up bones. Diggin’ up bones, I’m diggin’ up bones. Exhuming things that better left alone…..”

That is what we do and when we do it. It is in those moments when the house is quiet or the office is empty and our mind has a chance to drift, those moments are when the devil does his business of digging up the bones of our past sins and mistakes. At those moments we end up beating ourselves up over things that are as the songs says are ‘dead and gone’. As the song also says those things are better left alone and as the Bible teaches left to God.

Then I ran across a new video by Tim McGraw and it fittingly was called ‘Let it Go’. This song takes the theme of what to do when the devil won’t get off your back, when he keeps digging up those old bones in your life. It provides good truths that we can hang onto, listen up:

“Skeletons and ghosts are hiding in the shadows, threatening me with all the things thing that they know. Choices and mistakes, they all know my name. But I’m through holding in and holding onto all that pain.”

Do you find yourself here? Devil on your back, he is the great ‘reminder’ no doubt. He loves to remind you of your mistakes, no doubt. So what does that great theologian Tim McGraw say we should do, take a look:

“Today I’m gonna keep on walking, I’m gonna hold my head up high, I’m gonna leave it all behind…..” Good thoughts here; keep on keeping on, really you have no choice, keep your head up and just leave it all behind. But can you? Can you really leave your past behind? Can you finally get past the past and quit digging up those old bones?

You can but there is only one way and McGraw deals with it in the last two lines;

“I know, I know, I know I’ve been forgiven; I know, I know, I know I’m gonna start living.”

There it is and here is the point. The only way we can really get on with our lives is to know we have been forgiven. The only way we can know for sure we have been forgiven is to give it to Christ, ask for His forgiveness. That is it!

Then what? Well hey as the song says ‘start living….’ Oh yea!

Isn’t it high time you put the shovel away and shoved the door on those skeletons in your closet and started really living?

Is the title of your life song “Digging Up Bones” or “Let it Go” my prayer is that it is the later.

P.S. Don’t take Tim McGraw or Randy Travis’s word for it, check out the Bible.

Scripture: Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.”

1 John 2:12, “I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.

Psalms 103:12, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (all of Psalms 103 is worth a read on this subject)

Prayer: Dear Lord, we thank you that we can put our past behind us, that we can seek your forgiveness and know that you forgive. Be our help when the devil comes knocking on the doorway of our mind, help us to put him away and hold onto your sweet forgiveness. We ask these things in the name of Christ, Amen.