Watch Your Step

Watch Your Step

By Pastor Jim May

One of the most terrifying weapons that man has ever created is the land mine. It can come in all shapes and sizes. Some require the weight of a truck or tank to set them off, others only require about 3 pounds of pressure. And then there are some that are set off by simply setting off the trip wire.

When the soldiers in Vietnam went out on patrol they had to watch for every kind of mine or booby trap that the enemy could devise. Any step could be your last and there were no safe trails or highways anywhere. You had to watch every step and you didn’t walk a trail or cross an open field without being very careful. Just one careless step could cost you your life, or at least cripple you for life.

There is a passage of scripture in God’s Word that tells us that even in coming to the House of God and serving the Lord we need to watch our step. I believe that we can be too careless in our worship, or too flippant in our attitude toward serving the Lord, and those attitudes can cost us dearly, not only in this life, but it can cost us our eternal soul.

God isn’t playing games with us. Serving the Lord is serious business and we need to watch what we say, what we do and how we act when it comes to our commitment to Christ.

Ecclesiastes 5:1, "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil."

Where is the house of God, or what is the house of God? Is it this building that we call the House of God? Is this the only place that we can call the house of God?

Let me remind you that when Jesus comes into your heart that your body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost. In effect, your body is the house of God. Therefore, no matter where you go, or what you are doing, you are always in the house of God. Not only that, but by virtue of the fact that you are adopted into the family of God, then that makes you a part of the “house of God” also. Don’t ever forget that God is with you always.

There’s never a time when you can get away from the presence of the Lord. David said it this way in Psalms 139:7-12, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."

The conclusion of it all is that wherever the Spirit of the Lord dwells, we must consider that as the House of the Lord. You are His Sanctuary. That’s why we sing that little song, “Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary; pure and holy, tried and true.” We are a living sanctuary, a living, breathing house of God for God dwells in us.

Since we are never outside of God’s House, then we need to pay attention to what the preacher is saying to us in Ecclesiastes when he says to watch your step when you are in the house of God. In other words – Watch Your Step all the time, lest you fall.

Do you remember what God told Moses to do when he stood before the burning bush in the presence of the Lord? God told him to take off his shoes because he was standing on holy ground! Why couldn’t Moses wear shoes? What significance is there in removing your shoes in God’s presence? Does God hate shoes? No – that’s foolishness, there’s more to it than that!

Those shoes represented everything in Moses’ life that stood between he and God. God wanted Moses to get rid of everything that was in the way. Get rid of your own thinking. Get rid of everything of the world that holds you back. Get rid of whatever stands in your way.

In that same fashion God wants us to get rid of anything that was part of that old man of sin that we once were. If you are Born Again, then you are a new creation in Christ, a new baby in the Lord. That old crabby, hard-headed, hard-hearted, unforgiving, grudge bearing person that you once were that had the bad attitudes and the stinking thinking must be left behind because he is dead in Christ. Those things can’t control you anymore. If they do, then maybe you haven’t allowed Jesus to truly take control of your life, and you are just playing games with God.