| “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” | |
| —James 4:7 |
David and Karen Mains, in their marvelous children’s book, Tales of the Kingdom,2 tell a story of Amanda, a princess, who, despite warnings, takes home a dragon egg, hatches it, and makes a pet of the baby dragon. At first she enjoys playing with the little guy and does everything she can to domesticate it. But, before she realizes it, the dragon has become much too formidable for her to control and she has to kill it to save her own life.
Private sins are like that. We try to housebreak them and keep them under our control. Our secret fantasies, the so-called minor offenses we hide and whitewash, never stay the same. Like the dragon, they grow too large for us. The gossip we share with just one friend becomes too easy to share with many more. The anger we allow to spill out in occasional verbal outbursts at others soon becomes a way of life.
Recently I read this quote from J. C. Ryle in the book, Diamonds in the Dust 3 by Joni Eareckson Tada:
We are too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself in its true colors. Never when we are tempted will we hear sin say to us, ‘I am your deadly enemy…I want to ruin your life.’ That’s not how it works. Sin, instead, comes to us like Judas with a kiss. It comes to us like Joab with outstretched hands and flattering words. Sin, in its beginnings, seems harmless enough—like David walking idly on his palace roof which happened to overlook the bedroom of a woman. You and I may give wickedness smooth-sounding names, but we cannot alter its nature and character in the sight of God.
We need to remember that the dragon has a burning breath and a dangerous tail. When we first entertain the idea of letting him near us, or even domesticating him for our pleasure, we need to slam the door on him and flee.
We can never hope to serve God effectively with known sins in our lives. The longer we let them grow, the more attached we become to them, and the harder it gets to slay them.
Please pray with me:
Oh, Lord, give us Your Holy Spirit’s power to recognize the first sign of a deadly sin and flee from it. Help us to stay very close to You, hour by hour, so that we can be protected by Your loving arms and have the power You give us to resist the devil. Amen.
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| 1 This blog post was originally published on June 16, 2014. |
| 2 Mains, David and Karen. Tales of the Kingdom (Kingdom Tales, Book 1). Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Company, ©1983, Chapter 10. |
| 3 Tada, Joni Eareckson. Diamonds in the Dust. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, ©1993, Devotional for June 8th. |
