So Creepy
When we lived overseas, we learned the hard way that what makes you more susceptible to being car-jacked is if you’re sitting in your parked car in broad daylight. These facts leave you vulnerable:
The setting can be clearly evaluated in the sunlight: no one else is nearby.
You have keys to the vehicle you’re sitting in: the get-away will be easy.
You obviously don’t know better: the target is naive.
We couldn’t be totally immune to this threat ever happening to us again, but we could be on guard once we knew what made us vulnerable. And the same is true in our faith.
I’m creeped out by the words of 2 Timothy 3:5-7, “…Avoid such people. For among them are those that creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
After describing the type of people who creep into homes with false content, Paul points out three characteristics that weakened the women’s faith, making them easy targets for creepers. They were:
Carrying sin around. A burden as heavy as unconfessed sin leaves us without strength under the weight of its accusations. But repentance releases us (1 John 1:9).
Controlled by pleasure. Shackled to every whim and desire, we’re dragged one way and then the other in search of the next comfort. But the Spirit is stronger (Galatians 5:16).
Constantly learning, but never concluding. Content consumption is just spinning mental wheels if it doesn’t lead to or align with conclusive truth. But the Word is the source of real life-change (John 17:17).
Let’s not learn the hard way.
