Genesis 4:7 "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you; but you must master it."
This is one of my favorite verses in Scripture. It puts the burden on us to get right with God, to do right, and to keep sin from working its way into our homes. The crouching tiger is a hidden dragon - but he can only get to the door. He can't get in if we don't let him.
One part I especially like is thought that we can protect our homes, that they can become sanctuaries of holiness and rightness, even while the world flails away at you from the outside. I think of the time when I was growing up when one of my older brothers was being bullied and ran home and got to our front door, only to find it locked. He then got beat up. But he knew if he could have made it inside he would have been alright. Home was a safe haven from the bully.
This is not necessarily true anymore. I just finished reading an article about a local high school girl who hung herself because the bullying had entered into her home through the internet. They got to her in what should have been her one safe place. What once gave the bullied some sense of security, some peace, is now being lost. Satan is in the process of a "home invasion" and he no longer is simply crouching at our door.
Men - we know this. What we once had to seek to find (filth) is now pouring through the wires. The walls have been breached, and we have allowed it to happen. Satan has amassed an army of the vilest images and has them pulsating in the cables of your home. All you have to do now is flip a switch, hit a button or click an icon - and it comes in like a flood.
If we truly want to master sin so that we can be vessels of kingdom advancement, we have to begin in our very homes and purify them. They must become sanctuaries for God to work freely. Our very bodies must become the Temples that they are designed to be. If we can't protect them - then we're lost. The bullies will come in and destroy us. They got to this girl in her one safe place, and they will get to us unless we allow the "consuming fire" to be the only Life burning within us.
1 comment:
I agree... we must begin in our homes and with the things we do when no one else is around. The thing is, we are just as powerless as Cain was without the Spirit of God.
I like how Rom 8:13 says it "If you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."
Without the Spirit there is no power to overcome sin, satan, and the sinful nature... and yet we must (the burden is on us as you said).
That verse always makes me think of Gen 3:16, when God tells Eve that Adam will rule over her... cause I think it is the same sense, as in be in authority over : ).
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