I have no official statistics, just a personal impression. But I believe Barbour County might be the roadkill capitol of Alabama, especially for deer population. I have seen many more dead deer by the side of the road than in any area in that region. Of course, there's a lot more of Alabama, too. But I read an article about the outraged mayor of a small town in Pennsylvania. The Interstate runs through his community. This is a true story! The reason for his outrage? A paving crew was working on that road one summer, and they came upon a dead deer with much of its carcass lying on the road. Want to try to guess what they did next? They went right ahead and paved right over the deer!

It's hard to believe you can have this major obstacle - this major bump in the road - and your solution would be to just pave over it. It seems obvious. But a lot of us have opted for the "pave over it" approach when it comes to the biggest problem in our way.

King David is an intensely passionate, intensely honest man, and it shows up in a part of his diary we call Psalm 32. He starts by announcing something he has learned from personal experience. "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin the Lord does not count against him."

That sounds like a liberating possibility, right? But first David tried paving over the carcass. Here's how he puts it, "When I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me." He's talking to God. "My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer."

See, David's life story is the life story of many of us. We don't deal with the sins of our life. We "keep silent." We're experts at ignoring the biggest problem we have; the sin that is breaking our relationship with our Creator and probably damaging our other relationships. We rationalize, we blame others, and we do our best to cover it up. It feels as if we're getting away with living outside the walls of God. I assure you we're not.

We keep hitting the bumps of what we paved over, and God's hand is heavy upon us. We feel drained, or dirty, or incomplete, and guilty, and the thought of God's inevitable judgment haunts us. Well, David finally found peace in the only way he could; the only way you can. He says, "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover up my iniquities." No more paving over, no more running from God. You know what happens when you do that? Listen to what David said, "And You forgave the guilt of my sin." Finally guilt free, clean, and ready to meet God.

If you don't face your sin now, you'll face it on Judgment Day and receive its eternal death sentence. But there's a way to have every sin you've ever done removed from God's book forever. You face the facts of a life that you have run instead of God running it. And you bring all that sin to the cross of Jesus Christ where He took the penalty for your sin so you don't have to. You can walk up that crucifixion hill in your heart today. You come with a lifetime of sin and with the death penalty of hell, and you leave with every sin forgiven and a guaranteed eternity in heaven.

Are you ready for that? Well, tell God that right now, "Jesus, I want to belong to you. I put all my hope in you." If you will contact me at pastorshane@claytonbaptist.org , I can help you be sure you belong to Him.

Our biggest problem of all is the sin that haunts our past, poisons our present and threatens our future. Covering it? That's not going to work. Removing it will, and only Jesus can do that, and He's waiting right now for you to ask Him.