It's a little cold in the house today, but soon the sun will be up and it will warm us up. No need for the furnace or the fireplace just yet. Fall arrived last night and it feels good. My java choice this morning is a new on from the Door County Coffee Company. It is named Bourbon Vanilla Crème. It is pretty good and I will be making some more of it again.
2 Peter 2:19-22 English Standard Version (ESV)
19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves[a] of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. 20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22 What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”It's Sunday and I guess my choice of titles is not all that appealing to be reading with a cup of coffee and a biscuit. But my goal is to stimulate some thought for those headed to church or to prayer. Church services and prayer times are times when we meet with God. They are always good places to privately confess our failures or issues and "leave them there" asking God to help us to overcome them and not go back to them.
Our church is a beautiful building and worthy of respect. But very often I tell people to treat it like the garbage dump and leave their issues in the church. God will clean them up and hopefully you don't bring them back to yourself. It has worked very well as a metaphor for letting go. Letting go means to leave it alone permanently and not grab on to what has held you down from being all that God desires of you.
2 Peter 2:19:22 is a very frightening passage. As bad as it is for us to have first been enslaved to a sin in our lives, returning to it after being freed from it is worse than having never left it. God cleaned us up once and He will work to clean us up again but the consequences are worse the second and third times around.
An example would be this. A heavy drinker of alcohol does a lot of damage to their liver and brain cells . They call on God and sober up and then a year later return to their drinking ways where they start to compound the damage to their bodies. The same can be said about many things like drugs, greed or lust. The Proverb literally equates this to a dog vomiting out something they ate that was bad for them and then returning to eat it. I can't say that I have ever been ill, vomited into a bowl and saved it for later. Just not appealing at all. Obviously God uses very strong words here to show how serious He is about returning to our life's messes or misses.
I am sorry if I ruined your breakfast but this is one that God laid on my heart today and I needed to share.
Love to all,
Marty
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