Right outside my office window lives a big, beautiful garden spider. I don’t like spiders, but she is beautifully colored. She has made a web, and patiently waits for an unsuspecting victim to get stuck in her web. I have tried to get her to come out of her hiding place by touching her web with a stick, but she knows the difference between a stick and a meal. It’s amazing to watch, although I do feel sorry for her prey. A few minutes ago, it appeared that something flew into her web. The spider quickly came out to inspect the movement on her web. Whatever it was either escaped, or was very still. The spider waited, but after a couple of minutes, she retreated to her hiding place.
I have seen a moth get caught in the spider’s web, but the more it struggled to get free, the more it got stuck in the sticky entanglements of the web. The spider quickly scurried down to the frantic moth, gave it a quick bite, and then wrapped it into a burrito to eat later. It would have been better for the moth to have remained still, but the natural instincts tell it to fight for freedom, but to no avail.
Christians also get caught in sticky entanglements of sin’s temptation. They either don’t heed the warnings of the Bible and their pastors, or they think that they won’t get caught because they are too sly. The “beautiful” enemy has set a trap just for the Christian, waiting for him to fall into the web. The best thing to do is to stay as far away as possible from the temptations around you. When you do fall to temptation, it’s best to stop immediately right where you fell, without struggling to resolve the problem all by yourself, and pray. Struggling alone usually makes the situation worse, but when you confess your sin to God in prayer, He will forgive you and release you from the perilous grasp of destruction. There are consequences to giving in to temptation, and sometimes the scars remain the rest of your life. However, there is hope, and you need not think that you are alone. God is nearby, waiting for you to cry out to Him in prayer. He won’t always break down the web and kill the spider, but He will hear and help you when you do get stuck in the entanglements of sin’s temptation. Don’t struggle, but be still and pray, for God is only a prayer away.