Articles
Who Fills Us?
Today, a simple reminder that is taught by Jesus in a parable in Matthew 12.
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” (Matt 12:43-45)
This is a warning to people. We often use this in part, to illustrate that when we repent of sin, that God must fill that void left where we pushed sin out of our lives. We say God must come in, because if there is a void, Satan will use everything at his disposal to occupy that place in our lives again, and Jesus' teaching is that if we let Satan back in, we will be worse off than we were before we pushed him out the first time. I think we can see many reasons why that might be.
With this in mind, today's graphic about our kids gets even more serious. If we fail to teach them, they never have that place in their soul that Jesus should occupy filled initially, it's just empty, until Satan finds his way in as they come to understand right from wrong. Satan indeed will be what fills that void if it's left empty of Jesus, it won't be something good. We are reminded in scripture that there is no middle ground, we either choose Jesus, or we choose Satan by default. What do we want our kids to choose?
