“As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.”

One of my favorite images in Scripture is the wise men as they head back home. An angel warned them of Herod’s deception and showed them a different way home. They literally went home by another way after encountering the newborn Savior. In this passage, Solomon talks about people who indulge in sin. Perhaps they repent from it and move on, yet at some point they return to it again. It is a nasty, sobering, but realistic image he gives of a dog who vomits and then goes back to eat it. A kingdom truth is that it doesn’t matter how things appear to us in this world. What matters is that as we see through the eyes of God, we understand how things appear to Him. In reality, how things appear to Him is how they truly are. With the new year right around the corner, the opportunity for us—after encountering the resurrected Christ—is to strike out in a new direction. We now understand sin and its cost, and therefore, through the power of His Spirit, we can walk away from that life and into the new life that He died to give us. There are numerous stories in Scripture of people who lived bad lives before encountering Jesus and yet were radically changed after that encounter. Two of my favorites are Mary Magdalene, who we know lived a very debaucherous lifestyle. She encountered Christ and lived the rest of her life serving Him. Another found in the New Testament, which was largely written by a man formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, who, after encountering the resurrected Christ, was transformed into one of the most powerful witnesses for Jesus of all time. Today, look to Jesus and allow Him to lead you away from those things that don’t make you more like Him. #BeTheEdge

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV