Whitt Bits: Tiger TomCat

TIGER

We have new neighbor and a new pet...sort of. This is Tiger. He is a stray our neighbors picked up and started feeding. As neighborhood animals often are - he is at other houses quite a bit too. He fell asleep on our van a few nights ago; and the girls play with him whenever they are outside. All in all, he has been well received on our street.
However, a couple of Saturdays ago - he showed that he still has a nature in him quite beyond the domesticated house cat. Tiger went on the prowl and caught a starling - the girls called it a crow - either way - it became an after dinner snack.
The Bible teaches us in many places that we carry within us a constant involuntary desire to "miss the mark" called sin, or sinfulness. This is seen throughout the Bible, but some specific examples are found in Romans 3:9, 5:12-13, 6:1-2, 1Corinthians 15:56, John 8:21, 34, 46 and Romans 8:3, which says, "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God DID; sending His own Son in the LIKENESS of SINFUL flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh." Jesus came as FULLY GOD and FULLY MAN to be a Divine Sacrifice for Sin - paying the Divine Penalty also - giving us access to heaven through Jesus - the Way, the Truth & the Life, John 14:6.

Tiger demonstrates what we see in ourselves daily - a nature that in CHRIST'S POWER we resist and even hide - but is always there. Tiger can eat from a stainless bowl 99 % of the time - but the desire to hunt and kill will always be there - Hence the Starling Snack Bar. He did the whole cat thing - batting it around in the air and playing with his food before finally biting the head clean off of the poor bird. That was when I realized we are the same way.
We are not bad all the time - but humanity is as bad as they can be given the chance. I have witnessed this sinful nature come out at random places - in traffic, in crowds, in stadiums, at dinner with friends...all of us have missed the mark somehow. Here is the picture: Sinfulness is always there, Sin is defined by the Law of God so we know it is wrong, and Sin is carried out through the body or flesh of all people.

King David demonstrated this picture for us. "In the Spring, when kings go off to war..." King David stayed behind, got bored and took a walk on the roof. He wasn't where he was supposed to be and he didn't listen to the Spiritually Controlled part of him, he listened instead to the sinfulness in him. He missed the mark! He was confronted and he thankfully repented and got as many things right as he could.


HMMM

But we all know he couldn't continue as if As The Jewish World Turns didn't just happen. He paid dire consequences and the man after God's own heart continued to pay the rest of his life.

When we face our lifelong enemy SIN next, we need to be reminded of the Power Christians take for granted many times.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 ⁴The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

When we take sinful thoughts captive and Christ bends our wills toward His - sinful thoughts don't make their way to action through the flesh. I am reminded again and again watching the cat roam our yard, that THROUGH Jesus there is Daily Dying that must happen as long as we live in the Sin-FULL Condition as Humans.