Flirting with Sin
James 1:12,14,15 Great blessings belong to those who are tempted and remain faithful! After they have proven their faith, God will give them the reward of eternal life. God promised this to all people who love him … You are tempted by the evil things you want. Your own desire leads you away and traps you. Your desire grows inside you until it results in sin. Then the sin grows bigger and bigger and finally ends in death.
Have you ever thought to yourself “Oh, it’s only a small sin. It won’t hurt me”? But then it snowballs so quickly that, before you know it, you’re caught up in something bad, something that you’d never ever in a million years thought you were capable of?
Over the last thirty years, scientists in Sweden have been researching the effects of smoking on tens of thousands of people. In particular, they’ve been looking at so-called “light smokers”. What was the effect, they wanted to know, of only smoking between one and five cigarettes a day?
You’d think that so few cigarettes would have some impact, but not huge. Actually, over three decades, those who smoked between one and five cigarettes a day had three times the rate of death from heart and lung disease compared with a non-smoker … three times!
There are so many other things they could enjoy – why smoking?
And yet there are so many good things to enjoy in life but still we choose anger, resentment, dishonesty, unfaithfulness, or whatever your poison happens to be. Look …
James 1:12,14,15 Great blessings belong to those who are tempted and remain faithful! After they have proven their faith, God will give them the reward of eternal life. God promised this to all people who love him … You are tempted by the evil things you want. Your own desire leads you away and traps you. Your desire grows inside you until it results in sin. Then the sin grows bigger and bigger and finally ends in death.
God has put so many good things on this earth for us to enjoy … so many … and yet we still want to delude ourselves about being a light smoker. There’s no such thing. You can’t flirt with sin and get by unscathed.
… the sin grows bigger and bigger and finally ends in death.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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