The Wary Deer

Head down, my mind wandering with a myriad of thoughts, I walked slowly to my vegetable garden in the back yard. Suddenly I heard the noise of several deer running from my neighbour’s yard. A few weeks later, the same thing happened at the cottage. As soon as I opened the front door, deer scattered into the woods.

Those deer were smart. Wary of danger, they fled as quickly as possible. They were like Joseph, who fled from Potiphar’s wife, rather than give in to temptation or be caught in the sin of adultery.

Paul writes, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18—20 NIV).

We do well to remember that God bought believers with the precious blood of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is living inside us. Let us be like those deer and flee from any sign of danger.

Waiting on the Lord

After scurrying across the yard, the rabbit plopped down on the driveway. Its ears stood straight and tall, listening for any sign of trouble. For more than five minutes, the rabbit sat still and did not move a muscle.

Several times I left the room and then came back to see if the rabbit was still there. It was. How unlike that rabbit most of us are! We hurry from one activity to another, never stopping to take a break. Life is a rat race, a never-ending whirl of things to do.

We need to sit down like the rabbit and listen to the Lord. The Psalmist writes, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 NIV).

If we take the time to be quiet and hear God in his Word, then we will not be caught off guard or unprepared when the trials of life besiege us. Instead we will draw our strength from the Lord.

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Struggling with Sin

Sometimes the changing seasons appear to engage in a tug of war with each other. Are you glad when you see a robin, the first sign of spring? Yet that robin does not necessarily mean the end of winter weather. Less than a week after I saw a robin this year, winter returned with a vengeance. Some communities in southern Ontario received the same amount of snowfall as a January storm.

I do not know how you feel, but I enjoy the opposite—a heat wave in September. It means one more chance to go canoeing or sailing before cold grips the land. In contrast, skiers rejoice when they can ski in April. Others prefer not to have to deal with shoveling more snow. Whatever your preferences, everyone must accept the fact that summer and winter do not usually end abruptly. From a human viewpoint, there is a tug of war between the seasons.

The same situation occurs spiritually. When a person is saved, he or she accepts Jesus as Lord and Saviour. No longer are we legally guilty of our sins because Jesus took the punishment, which we deserve. Nevertheless the long process of sanctification begins. The new nature in Christ struggles to eradicate and replace the old sin nature. What a tug of war spiritually!

The apostle Paul lamented, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18, 19 NIV).

Paul struggled with sin in his life, just as we do. Thankfully, the Lord continues the painful process of sanctification in believers. He never gave up on Paul. Likewise God will never stop working to make us more like Jesus.

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