Nets

Dear Boys and Girls,

“Hey!” Charlie looked behind him in surprise. How was the soccer ball in the net when he had tried so hard to block it?

Aaron chuckled. “You kicked it in yourself with your foot!” he explained gleefully. “A point for me!” Charlie ran his hand through his unruly hair and then set both hands on his knees. Frowning in concentration, he prepared himself for the next shot. He would not let the ball go in the net again!

There are many kinds of nets. Soccer nets catch soccer balls, fishing nets catch fish, and butterfly nets catch butterflies. There are many shapes and sizes, but they are all used to catch something. If a bird, bat, or flying squirrel comes in your house, a net can be useful to catch the creature and put it outside again. Nets are strong and quickly trap the victims. Before they know it, they are caught.

Temptations are like nets. They catch us by surprise and quickly snare us. Before we know it, we are caught. Your mom asks who took the brownies, and you are tempted to lie. Before you have thought it through, the words already come out of your mouth. “Not I!”

It is not only tempting to cheat, lie, sneak, or go along with others in sin, but it is also very easy. It is easy to skip your duties and do wrong things. How much harder it is to try to do what is right. Do you know why this is? Our hearts are inclined to evil. We are born with a heart that leans towards doing as we like.

The temptation to sin is strong. One heedless move, and we have already been caught. That is why the Lord taught His disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” He teaches us that we cannot stand a moment against sin ourselves. We must be taught that we not only cannot stand against sin, but we do not want to either. We do not only fall into sin, we lean towards it.

We are as a fish that swims close to a net. So often, we do not stay as far as we can from sin. Often, what we think will make us happy leads to trouble, instead.

When a person receives a new heart, he also comes to fight against many enemies. He feels weak and unable to fight against sin, Satan, the world, and self, and he must often pray, “Deliver me from evil…. Keep me and help me!”

In 1 Timothy 4:16a, we read, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them.” To take heed means to watch…pay attention…be careful. Take heed of your own heart; it is as a net, ready to sin and loaded with sin. We cannot trust ourselves to do what is right. Our hearts are deceitful. We cannot mend such a heart.

We must take heed also of time. Pay attention. We may think we will live a long time. We may think that the end of life is far away, but how do we know? The devil traps us into the net of being too busy to think about it, and sometimes, the net of death comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Wise King Solomon wrote of this: “For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.”

God knows how and when we shall die. That is not for us to know. This means that we must be made ready before that time comes. Ask the Lord to prepare you. Even if we were able to escape every temptation in this life, we would still have a heart that does not love and serve God, unless He gives a new heart. Such hearts love the Lord because He first loved them. Ask Him to catch you in that GOOD net, the net of His Word!

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