“Church Signs,” a 2019, desk calendar I received for Christmas posts a daily saying taken from selected church signs across the nation. The January 4th saying caught my attention and gave me pause to meditate and think on its message. It said, “If you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, don’t go deaf in the wrong ear.”
The Bible clearly warns us about the constant battle between the flesh and the spirit or between self and God, between right and wrong, evil and good. The Apostle Paul spoke of his own dilemma when he said, “Although I have the desire to do what is right, I don’t do it. I don’t do the good I want to do. Instead, I do the evil that I don’t want to do…So I’ve discovered this truth: Evil is present with me even when I want to do what God’s standards say is good….It is a war with the standards my mind sets and tries to take me captive to sin’s standards which still exist throughout my body. What a miserable person I am! Who will rescue me from my dying body? I thank God that our Lord Jesus Christ rescues me! (Romans 7:18-19,21, 23 -25)
Paul’s dilemma in the first century is a classic example or our battle in the twenty first century – proof that human nature and the war between the flesh and the spirit has not changed in all these years. Proof also that, figuratively speaking, we all have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. All the more reason to be discerning, to be wise, to know that God has your best interest at heart. Listen to the angel Listen to God! No wonder Jesus often said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”
In His Love,
Charles
