People usually don’t ruin their life all at once. It is usually decisions over a period of time. That said, you can go out this afternoon and rob a bank, and it will pretty much put your life in downward spiral all at once. Most of the time, ruining your life is a culmination of small decisions made over a long period of time.
If you haven’t read the story of Samson in the Bible, this story defines what I am saying. I heard Andy Stanley speak on this a few months ago, and it stayed with me. I won’t go into the whole story as you can read it for yourself, but Samson was a very physically powerful man who was chosen by God. His main instruction was to never tell anyone where his strength comes from (his uncut hair) because if people knew where his strength came from, they could destroy him. He had a weakness for women, and one woman in particular was Delilah. She would ask him where his strength came from and to make a long story short, he toyed with her and kidded with her over this issue and eventually told her his secret. She deceived him and told his secret to the people that were trying to kill him; he basically died a blind and broken man.
He didn’t die because he did one thing wrong. He died because he played with and toyed with the gift God had given him. He died a shameful death because he couldn’t control himself.
He played with that area of his life where he was vulnerable and little by little, it cost him his life. The New Testament speaks many times of “The” sin that so easily makes us stumble, and I believe we all have a “The” sin that we need to be very careful around and to watch very closely in our lives. To some it is eating, to others it is worry, inferiority, fear, sex, drinking, alcohol, gambling and the list could go on and on.
I remember when I was a child how we would watch a scary TV show and how afraid I would be the whole time. I remember my dad Gene would always wait until that precise moment when the bad guy would jump out, and Gene would grab me and scare the living daylights out of me. The more movies a person watches that are scary, the more they get comfortable with them. It is the same with any weakness in our lives. If we keep letting that thing in our lives slowly get to us, we could be putting ourselves at risk just like Samson.
Enough said on this subject. Anyone reading this knows what the point is. We should heed the story of Samson because he lost his life, his purpose, his calling, and opportunity to do something great with his life. KT