It Starts with Pride

When I was a kid, I liked to set little plastic army men on fire. I would do this when my mother was at work. I would get out my little bags of green plastic army men, which were molded into various poses, and I’d light them and watch them melt.

But one day, I was doing this over a newspaper, and sure enough, the newspaper suddenly caught fire. I ran through the house holding this newspaper with the burning plastic and threw it into a rattan wastebasket, which caught fire too. Thankfully, I was able to put it out.

That’s how sin works in our lives. We think, “I’ll just play around in this area. I’ll just cheat a little in that area. I’ll be able to handle it.”

Then all of a sudden, it’s a wildfire, and we’re wondering how it started.

It started because we lowered our guard and compromised.

That’s exactly what Samson did with Delilah, whose name means “delicate.” One day, she said to him, “Please tell me what makes you so strong and what it would take to tie you up securely” (Judges 16:6 NLT).

Now, is that a healthy relationship? But sin makes you stupid, and I think the reason Samson thought he could handle it was because he was so strong in other areas. He thought he could overcome it.

Yet the Bible says, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18 NLT).

For any person who has fallen into sin, regardless of what kind of sin it is, it always starts with pride. It starts by saying, “I’ll never do that,” or “I’m too strong to fall there,” or “I’ve got this one nailed,” or “This isn’t a problem at all.”

When we think that way, we’re setting ourselves up for the kill.