If You Play With Fire...
"Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour." 1Peter 5:8(NLT)
by Alexandra Copeland
I’m sure you’ve heard the old
saying, “If you play
with fire, you’re going to get burned.” My grandmother
would tell us this all the time, and generally she would say
it after we had done something we regretted. This statement
is more than a wise old adage; it’s an obvious truth that
all of us need to hear more than a few times. The poignancy
of it is contained both in the fact that it uses such an
obvious truth as a warning, and its use of the element of
fire; because as we all know, fire is both incredibly useful
and it can also be extremely dangerous. It’s a statement
that often carries years of life experiences, with all the
bumps and bruises that come with it, and it speaks to our
tendency to overlook the obvious, even when the truth is
staring us square in the face. We skip over it as if it were
hidden underneath layers of stuff, when in fact it’s not
veiled at all.
As mature adults, one would
think we’d know better than to play with fire. The very
notion of playing with it suggests a lack of appreciation
and respect for its volatile nature, but this is how many of
us roll—shot callers and all of that. The ego gets out of
whack, and we start thinking that we can handle far more
than we actually can. This is one of the places where the
enemy tries to really sock it to us. Our propensity to jump
head first and plunge into situations without wisdom and
experience is something the devil commonly uses against us.
God doesn’t want our
pleasures in life to be less. He tells us in His Word how
best to go about it. The key to every single piece of
happiness and fulfillment we could ever want is found within
the realm of Godliness. Most of us know this, but sometimes
those hot-spots can be very alluring. We long to be free,
some of us, and we don’t want anyone to tell us that we’re
heading down a wrong path. We don’t want to hear that the
person we’re involved with is not the person we think or
that our decisions and choices are not coming from a place
of desiring to please God. We keep pushing our own agendas
and marching to our own drum beats because we figure that’s
our best shot at happiness.
At our cores all of us yearn
for happiness.
Somewhere in our journeys,
we’ve associated certain things with feeling good. And
believe it or not, some of the things that we associate with
happiness will inevitably cause us pain. We know they’re not
good for our souls, but still we allow ourselves to become
so comfortable with emotions of sadness or negativity, that
we cozy up to the devil we know for fear of facing one we
haven’t yet met. That’s no way to live.
Romans 5:3-4 (MSG) tells us,
“3 We can rejoice,
too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that
they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops
strength of character, and character strengthens our
confident hope of salvation.” We want
right now
gratification, and it drives much of our decision making and
choices. Instant gratification can land us in a lot of hot
water. We need to learn from our mistakes and recognize that
a small touch of something really hot should teach us not to
touch it again. Knowing our weak spots, the enemy will use
our hard heads against us and send problems and trials our
way to test us with temptation. Of course he’s seen us react
negatively and impetuously in the past, so he uses
situations and people to shift our focus away from God
because the enemy knows the areas where we’re easily
bamboozled. The Father wants us to wise up. He wants us to
recognize the tricks for what they are so that we don’t flip
out over these things, even if they find us with our guards
down.
There is no place we can
travel that God cannot find us, and there’s no situation of
which we’ll face that God cannot deliver and get us out of
it. He will never leave us or forsake us. This is indeed the
very best good news we could ever hope to hear, but not only
must we hear it, we must trust in it. Isaiah 40:30 tells us,
“But those who trust in the LORD will find new
strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They
will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”
When we learn to wait on God we learn this thing call
endurance, and it helps us develop patience, and patience
strengthens our hope.
It’s a privilege and a discipline of
our faith to wait on God to work things out for us. Trusting
God through some of the messes we find ourselves in does
something supernaturally on the inside of us. Something gets
worked out in our souls when we learn to lean on God and
believe wholeheartedly in His love for us. Romans 5:5 (NLT)
says, “And this hope
will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God
loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill
our hearts with his love.”
We get burned most often because we
look for love and happiness in all the wrong places. We
sense the holes in our souls and we become desperate to have
them filled. God knows this about us. He knows that we’re in
search of happiness, and that we want to feel
whole—complete, and loved, that’s why we can take such
tremendous comfort in Romans 5:5, where God’s tells us that
He’s given us the indwelling Holy Spirit to fill up our
empty spaces—to pack our hearts with His love.
Life demands a certain discipline of
us. We’ve got stuff to do, and to maximize our time on earth
and do all the good things God has in store for us, we’ve
gotta do things God’s way. He knows how to help us get the
absolute most out of life, and yes, personal discipline is a
big part of it. There are some things we simply cannot do,
and some places we cannot go, because those things will take
us off the path of God’s love. He’s a God of order. He’s not
the author of chaos and confusion; that’s the enemy’s
territory. So as men and women who desire to please Him and
follow Christ, we have to settle in our minds that
self-discipline and self-control is a big construct in God’s
plan, and this is a really good thing.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross,
the veil in the temple was ripped from top to bottom. No
longer would we be separated from the Most Holy of Holies.
No longer would the veil of ignorance blind us from all that
God has in store for humanity. Because of Christ, we are no
longer children of darkness. 1Thessalonians 5:5-8The Message
(MSG) says, “But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off
guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of
Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand.
So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s
keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and
get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of
Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober,
dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.”
God has given us everything we need to stay alert. Our eyes
should be wide open to the devil and his tricks, and we must
not allow disobedience to keep us in the dark.
Ephesians 4:14-16 (MSG) says,
“No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in
the woods, small children who are an easy mark for
impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth
and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our
lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do.”
God expects that at some point we’ll stop getting burned by
the hot things we have no business touching, and remember
the consequences the last time we pulled a fast one. He
wants us to trust that He knows what’s best for us, and to
learn to recognize the impetus of the spirit within, because
the indwelling Holy Spirit will direct and guide us away
from danger. Our responsibility is to follow his lead.
■
Scripture quotations are from the
Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007
by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used
by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT)
are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation,
copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights
reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King
James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used
by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from The Message.
Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by
permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
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