Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Too much of a good thing
Most of us won’t often be tempted to commit obvious sins such as armed robbery, adultery, murder etc. Satan knows that we will recognize the flagrant wrong in such temptations and refuse to act on them. In stead, his tactic is to entice us to push some thing good beyond the boundary of the will of God until it becomes sin. He treats us like the proverbial frog in the pot of water: gradually turning up the heat of temptation, hoping we don’t notice that we are approaching the boundary of God’s will and jump out before something good becomes a sin.
Paul writes: "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything (1 Corinthians 6:12). Everything is good and lawful for us because we are free from sin and no longer under the condemnation of law. But also knew that if we irresponsibly floorboard our lives in any of these good and lawful directions we will eventually run the red light of God’s will, that is sin.
The following statements reveal the sinful results in a number of areas where we are tempted to take the good things that God created the boundary of God’s will:
physical rest becomes laziness
ability to profit becomes avarice and greed
enjoyment of life becomes intemperance
physical pleasure becomes sensuality
interest in the material possessions of others becomes covetousness
enjoyment of food becomes gluttony
self-care becomes selfishness
self-respect becomes conceit
communication becomes gossip
carefulness becomes fear
cautiousness becomes unbelief
judgment becomes criticism
self-protection becomes dishonesty
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment