Playing With Fire

When I was young the 4th of July meant one thing for sure, a huge bonfire. My dad would collect dry brush from the forest for months until there was what seemed like a mountain in our front yard. It would have only taken a match to light this huge torch, but my dad was given both to the dramatic and the dangerous. At about 10:00 pm we would gather around his pile of brush with friends and neighbors to sing the national anthem. A few minutes before getting everybody together, my dad would pour five gallons of gasoline on the pile. Yes, it was a crazy dangerous thing to do. But that’s what he did, every year, because he wanted to see the expression of shock on everyone’s face when he lit the fire as they sang, “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light…” Fortunately, maybe miraculously, my dad never hurt himself all those years of playing with fire.

In the book of Proverbs there is a question: “Can you scoop burning coals into your lap without getting burned?” That’s a no brainer. But the writer isn’t talking about somebody actually holding a burning log in his lap, he is talking about playing with the temptation to sin. My dad got away with playing with gasoline and fire, but no one, no one ever gets away with playing with temptation. We human beings always get burned. The only question is, “How badly do we get burned?”

This weekend we are going to be studying the 6th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer – “Lead us not into temptation.” If you are breathing right now, you are going to be tempted in some way in the next hour or so. That is the world we live in. What matters is, what you do with that temptation.

Have you been playing with the fire of temptation? Do you rationalize it with, “I can stop any time I want?” Join us for one of our services this weekend in order to look long and hard into the face of temptation. See it for what it really is – fire that will burn your soul.

Saturday night service: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning services: 10:00 am