{"id":3703,"date":"2014-04-07T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devonline.us\/dailyevotional\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2014-04-07T08:21:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T15:21:31","slug":"hate-the-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/hate-the-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"HATE THE EVIL!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Romans 12:9-11<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Love must be sincere.\u00a0 Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.\u00a0 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.\u00a0 Honor one another above yourselves.\u00a0 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Several years ago I was watching a show on the Animal Channel<\/em>. The show host was carefully holding a red frog in his cupped hands as he made a great case for the rarity of this small frog.\u00a0 Explaining that the red frog was close to being placed on the endangered species list,\u00a0 he stated that he always held a frog lightly since a frog breathes through the skin and can absorb certain chemicals from a human\u2019s palms that may cause its death.<\/p>\n

The host took great care to explain how this frog defends itself.\u00a0 He explained that if an animal took the frog into its mouth, the frog would inject a gooey, noxious substance into the throat and mouth of the attacker.\u00a0 This would cause such swelling and pain that the attacker would immediately release the frog.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the frog he was holding about eight inches from his face, made a leap into his mouth.\u00a0 He quickly spat and caught the frog in his hand.\u00a0 As he tried to control his emotions, the shaken show host placed the frog down onto the dank forest floor and quickly stammered through the rest of his narrative.<\/p>\n

As I have thought about this incident, I wonder why these wildlife hosts feel it is necessary to hunt down such weird creatures and then hold them with seeming ecstasy before releasing them again.\u00a0 Many times they have been poisoned by the creatures, but they still continue this dangerous practice.<\/p>\n

Here is where I make the spiritual application!\u00a0 That is exactly how many people — even Christians — deal with sinful things.\u00a0 We go after them and hold them in our hands even though we know how dangerous they are. All too often these practices strike and place us in grave danger.<\/p>\n

Today’s Scripture says that we are to hate what is evil.\u00a0 If we are to walk in the ways of God, we should see the danger of getting too close to the things which are detestable to God.\u00a0 What God hates we have no business holding close to us.\u00a0 We should run from it and not hold it close.<\/p>\n

The question we always must ask ourselves is: \u201cIs there any sinful thing in my life that I am holding close enough that it can inject its poison into me?”\u00a0 We need to get rid of those things that pose a spiritual danger to us.\u00a0 Turn to Christ and ask Him to give us the strength and power to get rid of the \u201cEVIL\u201d in our life.<\/p>\n

– – – Pastor Cecil<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romans 12:9-11 Love must be sincere.\u00a0 Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.\u00a0 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.\u00a0 Honor one another above yourselves.\u00a0 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Several years ago I was watching a show on the Animal Channel. The show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-romans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}