Have you ever battled pantry moths? I have! And trust me, they are not easy to get rid of. Several years ago, every morning I woke up to panty moths on the kitchen ceiling. I would kill them, but then they reappeared. This was a never-ending cycle. On a few occasions, I took everything out of the pantry and wiped it all down, to only have them reappear again. Finally, one day in desperation, I took EVERYTHING out of the pantry, including the shelves. And then I sat in the pantry to observe. I noticed the little peg holes filled with webs. These little buggers were growing inside these tiny little holes. After I cleaned each of them out, the pantry moths were gone for good.
This reminded me of the devil. He will find the littlest crack, the tiniest hole, to make his entrance into our life. And once he gets in, he’s hard to detect and even harder to get rid of. Our verse today reminds us of an important point… “Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.” In other words, we need to approach our Christian life carefully, not carefree.
Think of it this way… we’re very careful before crossing the street, right? We would never cross without looking both ways. Because failing to follow this important principle could turn deadly for us. The same is true in our Christian life. We need to walk every day carefully… because Satan is just waiting for us to mess up. He’s waiting for our guard to be down. And when he enters, he gets ahold of our minds and then we can easily fall for well-crafted arguments (Colossians 2:4) and be captured by empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense (Colossians 2:8). Nothing good comes when Satan has control of our thoughts. NOTHING!
I believe that many Christians are living carefree… ignoring the mandates in Scripture. When we ignore red lights, an accident is just waiting. So then, how do we live carefully? We determine what God wants… what He says. And we obey. Let me encourage you to begin each day in His Word and prayer. The apostle Paul offers us great advice on how to live carefully, especially when he says that we should put the WHOLE armor of God on. The first piece of the armor of God is the belt of truth. A belt holds everything in place. Truth does the same. We need to become truth wearers. Read it out loud every day. By doing this, it will penetrate our hearts and minds. And truth ALWAYS dispels lies. Let’s live this Christian life carefully, not carefree.