Sin is a hardening agent worse than epoxy

…encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.  

                                                                                     Hebrews 3:13

So says the Lord. This  hardening is a common experience in the heart of believers, often like an unrecognized heart attack doing damage.  However commonness is not an excuse, it is a call to diligence.  Here is a link to an article I want share with you. http://www.challies.com/articles/how-an-affair-really-begins

Jeremy sent the  article to me from the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.

I would encourage every Married couple to review the article with the humility to belongs to a confessed sinner saved only by the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For we sinners are called by God to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  It certainly sacred me.

The article is titled “How and Affair Really Begins.” The value of knowing how sin begins is the freedom to interrupt its destructive progress.  Chillies first statement is clear “Affairs do not begin with sex.”  So if you think your are safe because you have not had sex with someone other than your spouse you maybe in grave danger.   Chillies ends his article with a quote from John Owen.  I believe it will be of great value to us in the daily struggle with sin to recognize its path in this area.  This may also lead us to see the pattern or Mode Of Operation of Satan in other areas of our lives.

Has Satan begun by simply convincing you to let go of one of the gifts God gave us. Have you moved away from the intimate relationship you once had with the Lord. Satan moves us away from God in order to lead us into temptation by presenting an seemingly innocent attractive alternative. Has the enjoyment of something other than God’s will begun to subtly move us toward damnation. Has our pace quickened as the thrill or pleasure of the substitute, as we move away  for what we neglected. He has begun to entangle us.  By this time we are an alcoholic sitting at the bar.  We are going to fall into the sin which Satan designed for us.

Unless God by his grace interrupts the process.  May God be so gracious as to answer our prayer that he “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”  Even when it is too late from our vantage point God is sovereign.

And may He use our failures to teach us of His great grace.

Read the article at http://www.challies.com/articles/how-an-affair-really-begins