My wife is a bit of a city girl. She was raised in St. Pete for the most part but spent a little time on a small farm but never really experience the woods or wildlife. That is until she met me and I began to share some of my backwoods upbringing with her. She truly loves to see nature and wildlife. She is like a little kid with a new toy as she squeals and insists that everyone see the bunny rabbit or deer bound across the field. By the way, I have her express permission to share this! Let me get back to my story! Our family was taking our first north Georgia Mountains vacation several years ago. We arrived in the wee hours of the morning after driving through an hour or so of fog as thick as pea soup along the unfamiliar mountain roads. After we checked in at the office we were on our way to our cabin up the winding dirt road, which to us flatlanders seemed like, we were driving straight up the Rocky Mountains. I say all this to defend my wife for what I am about to share with you. We were tired, we were exhausted from a 10 hour, in the middle of the night drive and our eyes were blurry and overworked from straining to see the scary roads through the fog and last but not least very excited to be out in the middle of the woods where we expected to see and did see lots of wildlife. As we pulled into our cabin my wife starts to frantically point and squeals look it’s a bear by that tree! As the kids half awake jump up out of their seats to see, I am even looking in eager anticipation at this point. Sure enough we pointed the headlights of the car to reveal the sleekest most amazing pure black cat in a hunched position using the bathroom beside the tree! After a good long laugh, at her expense, we all went to bed with visions of bears on our minds! We later found out that it was just a stray cat that hangs around the cabins with no name. So we named the cat “Bear” and fed him some milk and sandwich meat. We have been going to the cabins for about four years now and that cat is waiting for us every time we get there for his food. Even if all the other cabins are full he always finds ours and stays around ours most all the time we are there.
Now that you have heard the story let me share with you what God has taught me through it. Like J.D. says... the gospel applied to lunch.
I am going to try to relate this story to sin and how it can affect us. Before you get all excited I don’t think cats are of the devil. But I have seen some that I am convinced are possessed! But I think the story will help you relate to this.
First of all sin and the temptation to sin will come when you are the most tired and weak. The Devil tempted Jesus after the 40 days of fasting out in the wilderness because He figured that Jesus is weak now, if I ever had a chance it is now. So just like Cindy and I, we were tired from our journey and easily deceived. If the security guard who drives around at night saw the cat he would have immediately known that it was the cat and never gave it a second thought. He was familiar with the area and knew what kind of wildlife he could expect to see. If we are familiar with the Word and Jesus our Savior than we can quickly identify sin and temptation in our lives.
Heb 5:13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.
Heb 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
It would be nice if we could figure out how to never be weak and tired then the devil wouldn’t have the open opportunity to attack us or send us temptations. Not Really, Our failure and weakness helps us to realize the true glory of God. So our goal is not, to never be tired or weak but to learn not to be deceived when we are. That includes having people to which you are accountable. There have been many time s that I didn’t do something wrong that I thought was right because I had Godly counsel that helped me see the issue more clearly.
Secondly, sin is deceitful. It will appear to be one thing on the outside and when you get a closer look at it you realize that it is not what you thought at all. Like I stated earlier the more familiar you are with something the less you can be deceived. Ephesians chapter 4 in verse 27 tells us to give no opportunity to the devil. If we are not studying to show ourselves approve and if we don’t recognize who are savior is or what he expects from us than how could we possibly know what not to do or what to resist. James chapter 4:7 says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. The submission part is reading the word, praying, worshipping, fellowshipping. That is how you get to know God. You don’t need to get to know the devil. We know him too much as it is. He is everything that is against God and His word.
So, sin will deceive you when your tired and weak, and it will appear to be something that it is not. So the very thing that deceived Cindy and I, we named it and called it our own. How often we do that with sin. It sneaks its way into our lives through some kind of deception and then we cling to it and protect it like it is our first born. I believed that lie for a long time with smoking. I had actually convinced myself that I deserved to smoke. It was my only vice and other people do a lot worse things than that. I welcomed that “cat” or that sin into my life. That sin in my life was my way of keeping God at a distance. I didn’t want to be too close to God at the time. He might take away my fleshly desires and I wasn’t willing to take that chance. Of course that is totally contrary to the Word of God, which tells us in Romans to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. But of course naming and claiming the cat wasn’t enough we had to feed the cat. Once we fed that cat once he would always come back for more. If you make provision for sin in your life, if you don’t remove the temptations and hold fast to that which is true in Christ Jesus then you are bound to sin again. 1 Thess. 5:21 and 22 says “but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.
After writing this piece I thought of an acronym that seemed fitting.
SIN IS...
Deceptive (It will deceive you into it)
Entangling (It will not easily let you go)
Abomination (Not accepted by God no matter what)
Tempting (It will seem good at the time)
Hostile (It is unrelenting and is out to destroy you)
Matthew Henry:
We should therefore abstain from evil, and all appearances of evil, from sin, and that which looks like sin, leads to it, and borders upon it. He who is not shy of the appearances of sin, who shuns not the occasions of sin, and who avoids not the temptations and approaches to sin, will not long abstain from the actual commission of sin.
