The Wart On The End Of My Nose

THE WART ON THE END OF MY NOSE

by Pastor Jim May

Imagine with me for a moment if you will, that you are just awakening from a long night’s sleep.

How many of you can really relate to Proverbs 6:10 when it says, "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep?" Every morning when I wake up, that’s my prayer. Lord, just a little more sleep, a little more slumber and a little more of time to relax. I suppose you can tell I’m not a “morning person”.

Take a journey now with me using your imagination. Your imagination can take you anywhere you want to go. It can help you to become anyone you want to for a while. That’s why so many people love to read novels. If the author is a good writer, the book will draw you into it so much that you forget, for a while, what reality is and immerse yourself into an imaginary world.

So today, I want to take you into that imaginary world with me and get involved in this message.

I get slowly get out of the bed, one leg at a time, open one eye and then the other, trying to bring the world into focus. Then I remember, I don’t have my glasses on and the world will never focus without them. Now where did I set them down? I finally manage to stumble across the half-lighted room, into the bathroom and turn on the light. Wow! What a shocker! Why I ever painted that room white I’ll never know. Once the blindness goes away and my eyes begin to adjust, I look into the mirror. I’ve looked in that mirror so many times before, but today I notice something very different. I rub my eyes to make sure that I’m really seeing right. There it is, big as a thimble. There’s no mistaking it. There’s a wart on the end of my nose.

My, what an ugly wart it is! How did it get there? I don’t remember it being there before and I believe I would have noticed something as hideous as a wart on the end of my nose. Nevertheless, there it is, big as day! It absolutely ruins my otherwise handsome face. How can I go out in public with something like this on my nose? Everybody will be laughing at me and pointing at me. I just have to do something about this wart on the end of my nose! I have to hide it with a mask, cover it somehow. No one can be allowed to see the real me. The real “me” is just too hideous to look at. I have to give the right appearance to be accepted in my circle of friends.

I wash my face, put on my mask and turn away from the mirror to continue on my journey for the day and out the door I go. Life is so very demanding. I have a thousand things on my mind. It’s easy to forget what I have seen and to get engrossed in the cares of life.

It doesn’t take long until I forget that there’s a wart on the end of my nose. I even forget that I’m wearing a mask. In fact, the mask has been on so long now that I have begun to believe that I actually look like that mask for real. I quickly try to wipe away all memory of the wart. I will never allow anyone to see what I really am. They might not like me anymore. They might criticize me, laugh at me or run from me.

There is a passage in the Bible that describes the condition that I have just described to you. Turn with me to the Book of James.

James 1:23-25, "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."

I have set the scene for what I want to speak to you about today. I want to draw an analogy between the hearer of the Word of God who does not do what the Word tells him to do and the wart on the end of my nose.

If I were to walk into the room without my mask off, someone will come to me and say, “Hey, you have a wart on the end of your nose. I never noticed it before, but it sure is a whopper of a wart. Have you ever thought about having it removed?”