The Effect of the Radar Gun

          Nothing makes your heart skip a beat more than coming over a hill and finding a police car watching you with a radar gun stuck out the window. Your heart seems to almost stop as you take your foot off of the accelerator and begin to coast by watching in your mirror for the appearance of blue lights. Some states allow radar detectors and sound an audible warning of a radar unit. We feel that this gives us permission to drive faster when the radar unit is not beeping and thus show our disregard for the law. When we see a long downward hill, we tend to let the car coast and it naturally picks up speed going faster and faster. You might as well figure that the policeman is going to be sitting somewhere at the bottom of that hill waiting for you to come speeding by. There are many different occasions when we are tempted to do something that is in opposition to some current law. Some places have laws on the books that have been there for years even though they are not enforced as they could be such as spitting on the sidewalk, jaywalking, disturbing the peace. Our opinion is that everyone does it, so it must be okay to do now. Your spiritual life also has a set of rules that you are to obey and they are quite simple. You don't have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure them out. Take for example the simple list of Ten rules which God has named, the Ten Commandments. Surely we could follow Ten simple rules. First Corinthians 10:13 says, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”

           Obviously, we failed at that attempt even from the beginning. The rules were simple yet man couldn't even keep from eating the fruit of one tree. Adam and even broke the one rule that they had and plunged mankind into sin. From there, we see the plan of salvation all the way through the Old Testament until that day when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming when he declared, “Behold the Lamb....” It seems that we are continually breaking the rules and that there is no hope for us but there is. Paul wrote about it in the above passage. God in His wisdom realizes how life is going to be filled with temptations to do that which is wrong and in our predicament, God proves a way out of each and every one of them. Our difficulty comes when we decide that we don't want to take the avenue that God has provided for us to take. We may even recognize the temptation that is coming and still keep on the same path, ignoring the avenue of escape. We might even say, “I did it once and the world didn't stop, so what's the harm in doing it again.” Pretty soon, you don't even feel any qualms about the temptation and plunge right on headfirst into it. The Lord Jesus Christ summed up the Ten Commandments into two. You are to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind and all of your strength and then to love you neighbor as yourself. That sums it up. Our focus, then should be on God in all that we do in this life. After all, the first statement in the Westminster catechism is to know God and to enjoy His presence forever. We must find that a tad difficult as we often fail. Again, God knows our problem and has provided us a way of escape. Are you going to take the route that God has provided? He has provided the “way of escape.” What will you do with it? Praise God today that He is working in our lives each and every moment.