To Obey Is Better

On a hiking trip with my family this weekend I learnt something.  The trail that we walked on was beautiful and long.  It went winded itself along a creek that often times was hidden behind enormous trees.  It was a day worth walking and we went ahead with enthusiasm and gusto.  Unbeknown to me and others in the group, the walk had turned into a race to the finish line, where ever that ended as no one had yet completed the trail.

So the leaders of the pack set off and we left behind choked on their dust.  It became obvious that we would never catch them.  Curve after curve showed no signs of my two sprinting aunts.  We came upon a sign that said DO NOT ENTER/TRAIL CLOSED CONSTRUCTION.  We should have met upon them here but they were nowhere to be seen.  We stood pondering if they would have gone ahead despite the signs.  We waited for a bit until I decided to go after them.

While I called out for them by name and silence responded I thought to myself, this is just how we are as believers.  How many times do we see the signs and ignore them?  We have a bible that maps out the danger and still we find ourselves in them.  We close our eyes or we say as my aunt did, “but I saw other people coming from there!”  The road to sin and hell is wide and filled with people.  Or perhaps we reason to ourselves, there really isn’t any danger. My aunts said “oh there was no construction today…it is a Saturday.”  There is a way that seems right unto a man but the end is destruction.

 

While we had a good laugh over my two aunts who high fived each other at the end of the trail and told us they won, there really is no good outcome to the end of sin. The wages of sin is death.  The outcome reaching far into our eternity and too costly for either of us to pay. 

Beloved today we need to take heed to the word of God ad flee from sin and all things that of evil intent.  We cannot be glib (casual) about what we are told to do by God's spirit.  We must obey the signs that God has given us.  It is not there as a suggestion.  To believe we must obey; loved ones it is the better way.