You see, sometimes we forget that every day is a choice between following God and turning away towards Satan. There is no in between. Now I am not a black and white person. My husband is and this is an easy concept for him. I on the other hand tend to see everything as shades of gray. Very rarely do I see life as absolutes. And that is where I falter.
I have begun to slack off in my relationship with God. My personal Bible study time keeps getting shifted farther and farther down my priority list. After all, I tell myself, God knows how busy my life is. He understands and know that I love Him. This is true. He does know how busy my life is, he does understand, and he does know that I love Him. So I slipped into the gray area and began to fall away from God. What happens if we move away from God? We move closer to that lion that is waiting to devour us. We can not grow spiritually without making God a priority.
We have to be alert to the excuses that we make in our lives that we use to justify not putting God first. It is a relationship. Let's be honest, how long would our marriages last if we woke up in the morning, glanced at our husband as we prepare breakfast for our children but don't take time to tell him good morning. Thought about our husband and we drop the children off and then head to work or to the gym or grocery shopping but don't take a moment to call or text him and let him know we love him. Then we see him come home from work and don't ask how his day was or tell him about ours because we are to busy helping with our children's homework and cooking dinner. When we finally tuck the kids in at night and all is quiet we turn on the television and sit beside our husband, but still don't talk to him. Then off to bed without so much as a good night kiss. We would be in couples counseling or divorce court if this continued for to long. If this were reversed and your husband was treating you this way, would you feel loved? appreciated? valued? important to him? I wouldn't. And yet this is often how we treat God, who provides everything and from whom love originated.
All Satan has to do is look for those of us who lack self-control, who let life get in the way of our most important relationship. So how about you? Are you being alert to what is causing you to let God slip down your priority list? Or are you being self-controlled and keeping that relationship where it should be? I am making the effort to see this as a black and white issue and be self-controled and alert so that I don't get devoured!
As always you can click this week's scripture card to download a better resolution image suitable for printing.
P.S. I also wanted to share an online Bible study with you that I will be participating in. It is a study of 1,2, and 3 John. If you sign up, you get an email every week with the portion to be read, and questions to ask yourself each day of the week concerning the selection. Often background information is included. I have done a few of these studies in the past and learned a lot from them. If you are interested you can visit Discipleship Lessons from John's Letters to sign up.
Love,
