Ever seen one of those embarrassing street preachers on a corner, up on a soap box, Bible in one hand, shouting “Repent, you sinners, repent or you’re going to hell”? And everybody’s walking by, head down, trying to ignore him. Perhaps his methods are questionable, but his message certainly isn’t.

I remember early on in our marriage, my wife once tried to poison me – well, almost. I was working in my study early one morning as I’m prone to do, so she brought me a cup of coffee and an English muffin as she often does, God bless her.

Now, the muffin had some tomato on it … great, so I took a bite and just about fell off my chair because under the tomatoes were some smoked oysters, left over from the night before. I like oysters, but at six-thirty in the morning … seriously?! Newlyweds!

I can laugh about it now, but things aren’t always what we expect. You can tart them up on the surface, but you take a bite and oh, yich!

Try as you may to dress some things up, at the end of the day, they still taste bad. That’s because oysters don’t stop being oysters, just because times have changed.

Jesus has this amazing knack of cutting right to the heart of issues, of calling a spade a spade, or an oyster an oyster as the case may be. And time and time again, He calls us to turn away from what we know is wrong and turn our lives back to God. That’s what repenting actually means – it’s a turning, a returning, as it were.

Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to tell people his message: “Change your hearts and lives, because God’s kingdom is now very near.”

Make no mistake, that sin that you want to cover up is poisoning your life. Repent.

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.