Daily Devotional – September 4, 2020

Lord's Day, always do. Like Friday morning, I typically am preparing a message for Sunday morning and getting that all ready and working on that.

So this Sunday in the morning service be back in Ephesians chapter six and talking about the shield of faith to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

So if you can make it Sunday morning for the morning service at 1030, I encourage you to join us.

A couple of hiking stories, indulge me with these if you will. Maybe you don't care, could care less about it, about hiking and so forth.

But I think these are interesting stories. One of them is a guy I read, he was a somewhat of a novice hiker and he was out taking a multi -day hike, a backpacking hike and it's a hot day, warm day.

So he's wearing hiking shorts and he's just moving along at a fairly brisk pace. And he comes upon this section of the path that seems to be somewhat overgrown.

I mean, you can see the path, it's pretty obvious going through it, but there's vegetation that has encroached on the path on both sides of the path.

But it's not impassable. So he just burrows on through, makes his way right through that section.

It was not a great long section, maybe 50 yards, but he gets through it.

And a little while later down the trail, his legs are feeling very uncomfortable and he looks down at his legs and he sees this rash stuff developing and they're itching and starting to sting.

And then the pain really settles into his legs and he didn't realize it, but he had just gone through about 50 yards of stinging nettles and they were stinging.

The thorns or the weed that the plant causes this sensation of stinging and pain and a rash oftentimes.

Interestingly, stinging nettles can be used for some good herbal medicinal purposes.

But if you're just on a hike and you will go brushing your skin past those things, they don't leave you feeling very good later.

Similarly, another hiker tells this story. It's a young woman who writes about her an early experience.

Um, she, she had heads off on this hike, uh, repeating a trail that she had hiked a few years earlier.

But she says this, she says almost immediately, I'm not having much fun. There are trees and bushes on either side of me and spiders have cast their webs across the trail.

And with nearly every other step, I'm walking straight through the stringy webs. I wipe against my arms and legs constantly trying to rid myself of the invisible strings.

Soon the path curves and opens up. And I remember this from the last time it's a wide and grassy path, hot in the sun.

This time too, it's hot in the sun and the path is rather wide and grassy, but it looks like it hasn't been maintained in the three years since I've been here.

Last wildflowers and weeds shoot up from the ground and take over the trail almost to the point where it's hard to know if you're still on a trail or not.

And really this wouldn't be so bad if there weren't stocks of thorns to fields of thorns as I came to call them endless fields of thorns.

Let me just say, she says, I should have worn long pants. By the time

I got out of the field of thorns, there were scrapes and cuts all over the bottom half of my legs.

I'd been careful to moving slowly, stepping high, knocking branches away with the end of my stick, but it didn't matter.

The thorns were everywhere. Little nettles were too. They're tiny, sharp ends wedging into my socks and shoes and jabbing against my ankles.

Never again, I muttered to myself as the path finally joined the road and I walked on towards the mountain top.

How the thing is she had been talking to, uh, was talking to someone just a few days earlier who had gone on that same hike and he warned her about the field of thorns.

And nevertheless, she ventured off into the field in a pair of hiking shorts, leaving her legs exposed to the, to the cuts and the, and the scrapes and the nettles that pierced her ankles.

Well, I share these stories because of what I came across the other day in Proverbs 22 verse five, it says this, thorns and snares are in the way of the crooked.

Whoever guards his soul will keep far from them. So think of those two stories, the stinging nettles and the field of thorns and then the other nettles that they burrowed their way into the socks, the hiking socks of this poor hiker.

Think of those in a spiritual application. What are the stinging nettles that you might walk through that will later cause you a great deal of pain and misery?

How about the field of thorns that, uh, there they are. Do you see them?

Do you recognize them? Are you, have you been warned about them? Are you just making your way right into them anyway?

Oh, listen, be careful of the thorns. Be careful of the snares along the way.

The wise person, the wise person, God's word says, will guard his soul and keep far from them.

Keep far from them. Let's see. I try to see how well you can navigate through them and manage to deal with them.

Keep far from them. Are you on guard for the thorns and the snares, the nettles and the pesky webs that if you're not careful, if you're not on guard from them, listen, they will rob your soul of joy and peace as you're trying to journey on in the

Christian life. Accept the warnings of God's word, the warnings of godly people who would encourage you to stay away from the thorns and the snares along the path of life.

Keep far from them. They'll make your, they'll make your pilgrimage quite miserable.

Let's pray and ask the Lord to warn us of the thorns and the snares and that he would give us the grace to stay far from them.

Our Father and our God, you are gracious to have given us your word to tell us about things that will be harmful to us if we indulge, if we go that route, if we're not on guard for them, if we don't protect ourselves and we don't stay far from them.

Thank you Father for that grace, the gracious revelation that tells us not only what you're like, but what you like and what you don't like.

And what's very beneficial to us is to know that what you don't like is that which will harm us.

Help us to pay attention to the warnings that you give us and help us to be wise and keep our souls far from those stinging nettles and pesky thorns.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well have a good rest of your

Friday and a wonderful weekend. And again, if you can make it to the Lord's house, join with us in worship on Sunday morning at 10 30.

You're welcome. If you can't tune into the live stream at 10 30 on Facebook or the church website,