Lesson 2: Look Both Ways Before Crossing the Road
When I was in kindergarten my parents, teachers and authorities would constantly tell me to look both ways before crossing the road. Why did our parents and teachers make certain that we learned to obey this? Because crossing the street is extremely dangerous; especially to a six year old who doesn’t look for cars.
Three years ago I experienced the danger of roads. On Thursday night after a prayer meeting at the church I was driving a 98, green Tahoe on Belfort Road with Aaron and Jason Rue in the passenger seats. As I was driving I noticed a silver Tahoe moving at a considerable speed coming from the left on A.C. Skinner (crosses over Belfort). As I continued driving I noticed that the other Tahoe was not slowing down for the stop sign. As we moved closer and closer to A.C. Skinner I realized the car was not going to stop. I pressed my foot to the break but it was too late. At that moment life froze. I can still picture it in slow motion today as we moved inch by inch closer to the other car’s back tire. Then like waking up from a deep dream, “Bang!” Everything went cloudy and a high pitch ring echoed in our ears from the air bags. We jumped out of our totaled Tahoe to find the other Tahoe flipped over in the trees, completely smashed, with the back right wheel twenty yards down A.C. Skinner. By God’s grace no one was hurt from the crash. We soon found out that the driver was drunk coming from Dave and Busters.
Life is dangerous. There are so many hazardous things in life that we face. A drunk driver may be dangerous but so is an unhealthy relationship, music that hardens our hearts, thoughts that corrupt the mind and soul and the images that form those thoughts.
In Genesis 2:15-17 God commands Adam and Eve to not eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when they eat of it they will die. Since man’s beginning he has faced danger.
I Peter 5:8 says, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone whom he may devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers around the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”
I Peter tells us to take caution. God’s Word commands us to be cautious: “life is dangerous! The enemy is seeking someone whom he may devour!”God wants us to be cautious in our friendships, with the music we listen to, those we hang out with, the things we look at, what we think about, what we read and a whole host of other perilous areas of life.
God commands us to be self-controlled. When taking caution our concern is not what the enemy can do to us, but what our “selfs” can do to us. James 1:18 says, “But each one of you is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” Our struggles come from within. We must check our hearts, thoughts and actions to see if they are subtly conforming to the world—whether or not we are being desensitized.
The devil can only devour those that cannot control the self. We find in Genesis that Adam and Eve failed to take caution. Genesis 3:1-11 talks about Adam and Eve being tempted by the devil to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve disobey God by eating the fruit and immediately cover up in fig leaves and hide from God because they realize their nakedness and have shame. Soon God comes searching for man and when he finds him God asks, “Who told you that you were naked?” Did God really not know why they knew they were naked? Of course He knew. Donald Miller says that God was making a point. For the first time their focus was moved away from God to them “selfs” realizing they were naked. God was saying, “How could you have rejected my love for you? How could you have abandoned me when I love you more than anything?” Before Adam and Eve sinned they were so focused on God, so captivated by Him that they did not even recognize themselves; their nakedness. It was at this moment that we discovered that the “self” is our greatest enemy.
How do we take caution? How do we control the “self?” The only way to control the “self” is to destroy it. A.W. Tozer says that the veil that keeps our hearts from God is “woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit. They are not something we do. They are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power. To be specific, the self-sins are self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love, and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep with us and are too much a part of our nature to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them.”
How do we destroy these self-sins so that our focus is turned back on God? Tozer says, “Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God.”
Only by being in the Presence of God can we destroy the “self.” It when we are in his presence that our “selfs” are crucified on the cross.
The second way we must take caution is look both ways before making a decision. When most people make a decision they only look one way, seeing how their decision is going to bring them pleasure at the moment, but few see the coming train wreck on the other side.
Finally, we must have peripheral vision rather than tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is the inability to see the consequences of your decisions. This is caused by a lack of self-control. It is when we are so focused on ourselves and what we want that our decisions are formed by momentary pleasure rather than by God’s will. Peripheral vision, on the other hand, is when our eyes are moved off of ourselves to God. As we read God’s Word, get in our prayer closets and seek him, as we die to ourselves our vision becomes peripheral and we learn to look both ways, taking caution and making wise decisions.
Ryan Austin
