Careful! It’s At Your Doorstep

When God speaks...we really should listen. Although that’s a pretty obvious truth, it’s something we all need to heed in this hurried and crazied life.

Genesis 4:7 is a very basic, yet profound, truth that should be ingrained in each one of us. This is what the Lord was saying to Cain after expressing His displeasure at the sacrifice he offered Him.

“But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” NIV

Definitely words of wisdom we should all take to heart. Probably will show up in one of my song lyrics in the not-too-distant future.

Now I don’t generally get into the different translations of the Bible too seriously, although I do use the New International Version most often. That said, I found it interesting that the King James Version--which by most experts has a more accurate transliteration--uses the personal pronoun of “him” rather than “it” when referring to sin. Either way, whether you’re talking about sin in general terms or about Satan himself, it’s rather sobering to realize sin is crouching at your doorstep. The saving grace in this is that God says, “But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.” The corollary to that, of course, is that if we are doing right in God’s eyes we have a distinct advantage of having the Holy Spirit camped out at our door rather than evil.

All this to say, we should be very mindful of how close sin is to our everyday lives and not take it for granted. When trials and challenges come our way it’s easy to be more alert and conscious of how affected we truly are by the world. When life seems to be going fairly smoothly, however, it’s all the more reason to remember God’s words.

Sin...Satan...all powers of darkness are just waiting to be camped out at our doorstep, waiting for that opportunity to enter in and wreak some havoc in our Christian walk. We need to prepare and be on guard at all times.

God has been warning us since the beginning of time and  I Corinthians restates it quite nicely, “ Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.”

Blessings!

Greg Morton
Copyright © June, 2014

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