Isn’t that just how the devil works? He finds a weak spot in your life, an area that you keep putting off, an area where you think, 'Nothing that bad has happened yet. I’ll deal with it later. I don’t really know how to fix that anyway.' Then one day you look up and he’s devouring everything precious to you. He’s devouring your marriage, your family, your finances, your health, your career. He latches onto a weakness and uses it as an open door.
“Fix your fence” means you must identify your weaknesses and deal with them. It means not playing with what tempts you—at the risk of opening a door the devil will barge through.
Obituary
We need to look away from what distracts us—but we also have to look to a vision. Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” That’s serious. If you don’t have a vision, you will die.
“O” stands for “obituary.”
One year in high school, as my friends and I were celebrating homecoming week—decorating and cruising the town—we suddenly received word that one of the guys we went to school with fell out of a truck and died. It was horrible—I had just seen him moments before, yelling, screaming and laughing with all of us.
The next day, homecoming day, the school had no life whatsoever. Everyone had their heads down. We wore our uniforms and ribbons, but there was no school spirit. No one knew what to say.
When English class began, our teacher asked us to pull out a piece of paper and put our full name at the top.
So I wrote, “Terri Lynn Savelle.”
She said, “Now I want you to write your birth date.”
I did.
“Now, I want you to write last night’s date right under that,” she instructed. Then, “Now, I want you to write your own obituary.”
34 : JULY '14
