God's forgiveness lets you hit the reset button

When we were younger, my brother, Jordan, and I played a lot of Nintendo together.
We faced off against each other in all the classic games — Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Street Fighter, etc.
There is a photo my mother has of me sitting on the couch at a very young age playing Super Mario Bros. while toddler Jordan sat next to me holding an unplugged controller thinking he was actually playing too.
So from a very young age until I went off to college, if Jordan and I were home together with nothing else to do, we were likely playing some type of Nintendo game.
Our battles would occasionally get pretty intense, as well.
There were several occasions where my father would scream at us from the other room telling us to stop yelling at each other. Mom would also get the random phone call at her office from one of us because of some name-calling that had been going on. She would make us apologize to each other, and scold us for saying mean things to each other.
But every now and then, our Nintendo fights would escalate to the extreme level.
 If screaming or name-calling wasn’t enough to settle the score, we would have to resort to the very worst tactic of them all.
Once this weapon was deployed, there was nothing we or our parents could do about it.
There would be no turning back.
If either of us got so mad because of how badly we were getting beaten, that’s when the only other option was standing up and hitting the dreaded reset button.
If you’re familiar with the Nintendo at all, you know there are two main buttons on the machine — the power button and the reset button.
The power button is what you push to turn the machine on. But the reset button is what you push when you want to start all over. If you are in the middle of a game, pushing the reset button erases all your progress and starts you from scratch.
Why Nintendo made this button so easily accessible, I’ll never understand.
But if Jordan or I were getting beaten so badly that we couldn’t take it anymore, we would hit the reset button and it was like our game had never happened.
 And just like the reset button on a Nintendo can give us a fresh start, so can Jesus Christ in our daily lives.
1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us (our) sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
 That is the most awesome reset button we could ever have.
 Maybe you are reading this and you feel you have been far away from God lately. You’ve been living a life full of sin and know you daily make choices that would not be pleasing to God. There is no better time than right now to hit the reset button by confessing your sins to Jesus Christ so you can be fully cleansed.
 Or perhaps you are reading this and you have never accepted the Lord into your heart at all. Don’t wait another second to ask the Lord to forgive you and become your personal Lord and Savior.
 Just like I did not hesitate to reset all those Nintendo games to help me win against my brother, we should not hesitate to reset our lives and win the greatest prize of them all — eternal life through Jesus Christ.