Tonight, we were eating dinner and had some Wheat Thins Stix. They are really good. Our favorite flavor is the Fire Roasted Tomato (Heidi even likes them even though she cannot stand tomatoes. And for some reason, I think they taste like beef jerky).
Anyway, as Braden was eating them he started crying. We went through our normal questions of "did you bite your lip?" "did you bite your tongue?" and such. What it ended up being was the seasoning from the Stix was burning his raw lips. We helped him get it off with water and all seemed to be okay...until I was in the middle of my next bite and he was crying again. He was eating the Stix again. I told him that his lips were going to keep hurting if he kept eating them. He shook his head and said he didn't want to stop.
And that got me thinking...how often do we know we are hurting ourselves with our sins and yet keep sinning? How often does our loving Heavenly Father look at us hurting and say, "You're going to keep hurting if you keep committing that sin" and we simply shake our heads and say we don't want to stop?
It may not be that blatant with our sins, but sometimes it is. Sometimes we simply figuratively put up a firm hand to God and say, "I know this is wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway." Regardless of whether we "play God" and make bad decisions forcefully or whether it is one of those vices that we want to exterminate from our lives but simply can't shake, our Father is watching us struggle.
Sin is such a nasty part of our walks. Whether it's the world's lure, Satan's schemes, or our flesh fighting the Spirit, it hurts us. No matter how good it is, we have to stop. No matter how much we like it, we have to stop.
Braden's lips were burning because he was refusing to stop; if we refuse to stop, more than our lips will be burning.
"If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." -John 15:6 (ESV)-
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