Brush It Off As We Go

February 1

We brush shoulders with evil all the time. We may or may not realize when we are in the presence of the unholy, depending upon how much we allow ourselves to hear the whispering of the Holy Spirit within us. We know it is His job to guide and guard and teach us, so if we listen, we will hear His voice of warning when evil is near.

We can be sure the Holy Spirit will fulfill this role because it is part of what He was sent to do—to ‘teach us all things’ John 14:26. Not only does He give us the words to say when we are called upon to make defense of our faith before men (Luke 12:12) but He will also lead us into greater understanding of truth (John 16:13, 14).

Yet, there is a sense of the growing pervasiveness of evil in today’s world. How then, can a believer in Christ avoid contact with its ever-increasing presence? Perhaps we cannot entirely avert our eyes from seeing the ungodly messages of the world or stop our ears from hearing the siren call of the wicked things that allure the foolish to sin. But complete avoidance is not what we are called to do.

Psalm 1:1, 2 says, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord…” God makes a distinction between taking counsel with evil and brushing shoulders with it. When we walk with it, we are part of it. When it touches us in the course of our day-to-day walk, we flee from it and brush it off as we go.