When my girls were little they would look me in the eye and slowly let their hand glide over to do the very thing they had just been told not to do. Most toddlers find that behavior funny until they suffer consequences they don’t like.
For example, Morgan would drop her sippy cup on the floor just so we would have to pick it up. We would say, “don’t do it” and she would slowly push that little cup to the edge of the high chair and hear it drop to the floor, all the while keeping those big brown eyes locked into mine. I would pick it up and give it to her and the game would begin – her eyes on me…hand slowly moving the cup to the edge of the tray…me saying “don’t do it” and her chubby little hand making the last push to knock it over the edge, all the while holding her breath to see if I would bail her out again by picking it up.
But when I didn’t pick up the cup, it wasn’t so fun anymore. I would remind her that I told her “don’t do it”, that she didn’t listen and this was her consequence.
As the toddlers in our lives grow up, we continue to remind them of “don’t do it” things such as running in the hallways at school, pinching their sister in the car, eating a grape from the display in the grocery store, racing their friends on the back roads right after getting their driver’s license, walking home from night class alone, texting and driving, cutting corners at work, and the list goes on.
But there reaches a point that adults aren’t there to remind us of the “don’t do it” things anymore. And our adult “don’t do it” radar kicks in. It’s our conscience and for those who have accepted Christ, it’s the Holy Spirit. It’s that feeling, that voice, deep down inside that nags at us with that same feeling we got from adults when we were younger. It’s that feeling that what we’re about to do isn’t right but our “I want to do it anyway” voice takes over and we ignore the possible consequences.
Whether it is something as simple as taking a stack of sticky notes from work to something as big as not being faithful in your marriage, we may feel that “don’t do it” voice speaking to us. Listen to it! God is trying to get our attention to keep us from suffering the consequences of our actions.
At some point when we hear “Don’t Do It” and don’t listen, it’s not funny anymore like the sippy cup falling to the floor. “The devil made me do it” isn’t going to get you into heaven. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Let Him protect you from the fall. Because one day, our choice to push the sippy cup off the tray will have eternal consequences that no one can pick up and make better. It’s all up to us… do we go down the “Don’t Do It” path or do we choose Jesus and the eternal heavenly path? I say, let’s choose Jesus.
