Predators that spoil the vines

Fatigue is my catchword excuse for it, but it really is not fatigue. It is that sense of tiredness that comes with clutter. This isn’t the clutter of unwashed dishes and stuff that needs to be put where it belongs, although that can create a similar feeling. Instead, it is the clutter of small sins that are indulged but not confessed. Like unrelated knickknacks, they become scattered in the soul and eventually become heavy. I feel like my life needs a load lifted, but sleep will not do it.

Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom. (Song of Solomon 2:15)

Christians have used this verse about little foxes to describe things like passing on one tidbit of gossip, blurting out one unkind word, allowing just a little selfish indulgence, fudging the truth when it didn’t seem to matter much. After a few hours or a few days of this, the little foxes have spoiled the vineyards and no spiritual fruit is produced.

Sometimes I feel like I want to sleep all day because of fatigue, but need to discern whether or not this problem is actually those little foxes. Like any predator, they need to be identified, trapped and put out of my life.

How do they get past my defenses and hatred of sin in the first place? For the most part, at the time each doesn’t seem to be a big deal, but Jesus didn’t die for small reasons. In Him, there are no shades of sin. They either exist or do not. He allows that sense of heaviness and clutter to exist. Guilt, like pain, signals that something is wrong and needs attention. This is the real name for that cluttered feeling.

The good news is that He who convicts of sin also provides the cure for it. He died to pay its penalty. He lives to give us victory. In Him there is both forgiveness and cleansing. He can and often does de-clutter my life. He also gives the necessary discipline to prevent getting caught up in sin, giving me the safe guards to keep out the foxes. This discipline, like any other, requires effort on my part, first in thinking rightly about who I am and what I have in Jesus Christ. 

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:6–11)

Spurgeon asks Christians why we mess with it; hasn’t it cost enough already? Why would a burned child play with fire, or someone who had already been caught in the jaws of lion step again into its den? Have we not experienced Satan’s bite without playing around in his realm?

Sin is a big disappointment. At first, it seems either harmless or a promise of satisfaction, but this is never true. If it did, we would go back and wear its chains again, but no genuine Christian wants to do that. We have Christ’s mind and His hatred of sin.

Not only that, sin is never cheap. If it doesn’t land me in serious trouble in a real and physical way, it puts my soul in distress and makes me feel tired of life. I could say big sins do the former, and little sins do the latter, but in God’s evaluation of sin, there is no difference. Foxes are foxes, no matter how they are measured.

For those without Christ and those who know Him, the initial step to freedom from guilt and sin is the same. 1 John 1:9 says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

For Christians, that cleansed and clutter-free life also depends on learning to consider myself dead to sin and alive to God. A dead person responds to no stimulus, no temptation. Being dead to sin puts those little foxes outside the fence. Being alive to God also robs the foxes of their allure.

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Lord, sometimes You overlook my little foxes until I wind up with an entire “leash” or “skulk” of them (words for a group of foxes). These are vivid and appropriate words to also describe the sin with which the Bible associates little foxes. I don’t want to be led astray on a leash of sin regardless of its size, nor do I want to skulk around trying to pretend that all is okay and that I’ve never done anything wrong. I want the vineyard of my life to blossom and produce the fruits of righteousness and praise. As I spend time in prayer this morning, reveal each fox that I might confess it — and that You might put it out of my life.

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