A dog returns to its own vomit... What pleasant imagery.
When I was young, I had a terrible temper. It was especially true when things went tragically and profoundly wrong…like someone dropping my perfect football pass on my front lawn. Impatience also carries a horrific side effect: lack of tenacity. More times than not, I’d give up far too easily on too many things.
Flash forward and God did some reclamation. He decided He wanted me to be calmer and more patient. He placed me in the very fields that to properly plow required patience and persistence. Coincidence?
Reclamation. It’s what He does in just about every moment of our lives.
Flash forward again and I’ve seen that same temper flare up again presently. It’s like giving up sweets. I’ll have no desire for them, but search them out anyway and start up the sugar-habit all over again. We can revisit old sins and propensities for no other reason than to go back to our old ways.
Or…we can remember what our pre-reclamation vomit tasted like and return to the table that God sets before us for something a lot better on our stomachs.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Returning to our old ways is like saying there is something wrong with the redemption we’ve experienced and that is as distasteful to God as the consequences are to us.
For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 2 Peter 2:20-22 ESV, 2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
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