Lessons from a walk in the woods

I went for a walk Saturday afternoon back through the hills. The snow and ice had not melted yet - it was beautiful and refreshing to be outdoors climbing through the woods. During this walk I was reminded in simplicity about certain aspects of God's Word.

The road I was walking narrowed as I came to the top of the hill, and it forked. Soon the path faded into a small animal trail going through underbrush, vines, and briars. It was a frozen trap. I was crawling to get under and through the entanglements. Fortunately for me, the ice had limited the thorns' ability to grab, which made my passage easier and much less painful. The words of Jesus regarding the thorns choking out the Word of God, and the words from Hebrews about throwing off "the sin that so easily entangles..." came to me in a very real and practical way. Here I was physically, where I've often been spiritually. Had I given up and stopped in the briars; or if the thorns were so dense and thick I couldn't free myself, I would have physically died in the cold. As a Christian, so many times I've walked right into the briars, while the path was in plain sight. And sometimes, the path goes through the briars and we're going to get scratched. The thorns grab and pull, but Jesus can pull us with more strength than the thorns - but it can still hurt.

Unlike the thorns in the woods, spiritual thorn vines grow and entangle us more the longer we remain in them. Spiritual thorns are much more malicious than natural thorns. They pursue, and twist, and grab. In our spiritual life we are either moving forward, or the vines are beginning to grab. Deviating from the trail hurls us into the thorns and as long as we are moving the same direction the thorns are growing, there is no pain. But when we turn and move against them, they dig in, grip, and scratch, and hurt. When we stop on our journey, the thorn vines soon twist and begin to entangle. When we accept our entanglement, and continue moving in the direction of the thorns, and become content, we have become enemies with God and have spiritually died. That is the goal of the spiritual thorn vines. To cause our spiritual death.

What are spiritual thorn vines? Anything that pulls us away from God and His love.

"These are the ways of the world: wanting to please our sinful selves, wanting the sinful things we see, and being too proud of what we have. None of these come from the Father, but all of them come from the world." 1 John 2:16