Sermon Illustrations

CARELESSNESS

For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; and for want of care about a horseshoe nail. 

B. Franklin.

Steve Green, who sang six years with Bill and Gloria Gaither, tells about getting to know some of the work crews in the large auditoriums where their concerts were held. The Gaithers prefer concerts-in-the-round, which means extra work for the "riggers," who walk the four-inch rafter beams--often a hundred feet above the concrete floor--to hang sound speakers and spotlights. For such work, understandably, they are very well paid.

"The fellows I talked to weren't bothered by the sight of looking down a hundred feet," says Green. "What they DIDN'T like, they said, were jobs in buildings that had false ceilings-- acoustical tile slung just a couple of feet below the rafters. They were still high in the air, and if they slipped, their weight would smash right through the flimsy tile. But their minds seemed to play tricks on them, lulling them into carelessness." Satan's business is not so much in scaring us to death as persuading us that the danger of a spiritual fall is minimal. No wonder Peter advised us to "resist him, standing firm in the faith" (I Peter 5:9).

Source Unknown.