It’s the Little Things

A massive Redwood tree in California had stood tall for 400 years, surviving countless earthquakes, storms, floods, and other violent natural disasters. But one day, without warning, this massive tree came crashing to the ground with a tremendous thud. No one knew why. A lumberjack didn’t bring it down. A bolt of lightning didn’t cause it to fall. After close investigation, the answer was revealed as to why the ancient tree had died. Tiny beetles had worked their way into the trunk and ate away at its life-giving fibers, weakening the tree’s mighty bulk from the inside out. What powerful lightning could not do, little insects did.

In the same way, the devil seeks to bring down Christians through a steady drone of small, seemingly insignificant temptations.

On one front we pride ourselves with the fact that we don’t do this, or we don’t do that. But on the other front we are lowering our guard and compromising.

When was it that this world started becoming more attractive to you than your Christian life? Did it start when you decided to mow the lawn on Sundays instead of going to church? Or when you got more excited about the latest movie than about reading God’s Word? Whatever it is, that old emptiness will return, because slowly but surely, you have been compromising and going in the wrong direction.

It is like the song that Simon and Garfunkel sung years ago:

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping. . . .

Little things turn into big things. So don’t lower your guard and fall for this trap. When compromise gets into your life, you will start going downhill.