Isn’t it funny that when the Lord begins to work very strongly in your life, the enemy seems to step up his game as well? The last few weeks have been filled with lots of trying moments and lots of temptation. I have found myself struggling with the smallest things that never had any type of hold on me before. I remember my youth minister saying something about a frog in a crockpot. I think the analogy goes like this: if you put a frog into boiling water he will jump out immediately. But if you put that same frog in a crockpot he will remain even as it gets hotter. The warmer and hotter it gets he adjusts. Before you know it, the water is boiling and goodbye frog. Man that is so true in my life. I feel that it always starts out small and you think you can handle it but before you know it, you’ve reaped lifestyle of unconfessed sin. It’s almost like you wake up one day and you realize how far off you’ve gotten from the path. This was me just a few weeks ago. I realized that ever since agreeing to go to Africa, the enemy has been hard at work to make me get off course and live a life of distraction. And more than that….a life of tolerence.
I think this lifestyle is a perfect example of the book of Hosea in the Old Testament. The prophet Hosea’s personal life was used by God as an example of Israel’s relationship with God. Hosea was told by God to take a adulterous woman as his wife. Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord was seen in the woman’s adulterous ways. In spite of the wife’s ways, Hosea continued to love her just as God continued to love Israel. And that’s my story as well. Although I daily leave Christ to pursue other lovers, He pours His love on me. He knows every unfaithfulness within me, yet He loves. He loves me so much so, that He has disciplined me many times. And it hurts!!! Just as Israel had gotten so off course and tolerent of sin, so is the same temptation for me. I dont want to be the frog in the crockpot…
