The man who knows that he might be robbed, keeps his treasures hidden away where the thieves cannot steal them away. It does not matter how the treasures are protected, as long as they are safe from thieves. He does not worry about his possessions when he sleeps, nor when he goes out and about his business.

The foolish man keeps his treasure in plain sight, and often does not even notice when one of them goes missing until it is far too late to get it back. He is robbed often, and each time replaces his treasure with something else. But, even then he doesn’t learn from his past mistakes. He continues to leave his valuables out so that he can be robbed. When does the cycle end?

It is a slow fade when you give yourself away. When you are living in the black and white, and suddenly you look up and everything around you seems so gray. It starts with the little compromises, the ones that you may not even notice. It might start with the song you hear on the radio, or the program you watch on tv. It might start with a pop-up advertisement. The small things get taken away first, the things you might not notice right away. You might not pray as often. You might skip out on reading the Bible for a few days. You might even watch something that you know will draw you away from God. It does not matter what kind of excuses you make for what you’re doing, or why you’re reading/listening/watching whatever it is your watching. Sure, you can tell yourself that it’s for a debate with a friend, or it’s so you can know what’s out there that could attack you. It is still affecting you, from the minute you start watching/listening/reading it, until long after the sound has faded or the book is closed. And this leads to bigger things. You begin to lie to people. You begin to make more excuses to why you can’t hang out, or why you can’t be there for them when they need you. It leads to skipping out on church for weeks in a row. It leads to stealing. It leads to gossip and slander, and so many other things. It can take any one of these forms.

Soon, you end up so far away from God that you can’t even remember how to get back to Him. You can’t remember what it felt like to be completely serving him, to be a slave to his will, and to understand the joy found in that servitude. You can’t remember what it was like to not have to pretend to be something you weren’t. You can’t even remember how it all began to slide…or if you do, you cannot understand why one event, or one circumstance affected you so much. You have no idea how to begin to move back toward God. You have no idea how to untangle the mess that surrounds your life. You can’t even begin to distinguish an end to a single one of the chains that entrap you. You’re stuck. Or at least, that’s what it feels like.

And this…this has been my life for the past two months. I can’t tell you how it started. I can’t really tell you any specific event that brought me to this point. I don’t know when I began to approve of things that are against God. I don’t know when I began to fade in my slavery to God. If you were to ask me what happened, my response would be ‘I don’t know’. But the truth is, is that I know all too well. It starts with the small things. It starts with the pride of thinking ‘I’ll never fall away again’. Those are foolish thoughts. It’s like putting it on display for someone to steal away.

I know that I have to, and need to turn once more to become like the wise man who hides his treasure so that no one can steal it away, because he knows that it can be stolen. Because I didn’t think I could fall away again, I didn’t take the steps to protect myself from it. I want to be able to hide my entire self in God, so that nothing can take me away from that. So that nothing can make me fall again, so that it cannot be stolen away from me any longer. I want to be able to wake up and have joy in knowing that God is in control of my life, not me. That I involve him in everything, instead of sending him messages [whether intentionally or not] that he isn’t important to my life, or that he doesn’t matter in certain situations as compared to other situations. That I don’t have time for him. That I don’t care about him.

But how?

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