The Smoker's Setting

Do you know that feeling, when someone near you is puffing on the nicotine-charged butt of a cigarette, and one feels like suffocating is unavoidable? When that stifling, putrid smell of the smoke is making you cough and fumes given off by the burnt end of the cigarette is causing your eyes to smart? I think it’s especially frustrating when the wind just happens to blow the wrong way, and I get the full inhalation of it pushed up my nose and throat. I’ve also heard, that second-hand smoking is supposed to be even worse for someone, than smoking themselves.
However, if one is exposed to a smoker’s environment for long enough, the smell is not as noticeable, and one doesn’t even cringe when the he lights one up. If I spend much time with the smoker, (thus placing myself once again in a cigarette-infested atmosphere) develop a strong bond or friendship with the person smoking, I am bound, out of the comfort of familiarity with the “smoker’s environment” if nothing else, to begin at length to start myself. Even if that doesn’t exactly happen, if I smell of smoke, am comfortable with smoke, and can be found in the setting of other smokers, I most likely will be considered, or taken for someone who smokes.
Isn’t it the same way with sin? If we are in the surroundings of those who are swearing, sinning extensively in major and unbridled ways; if we are found in these places, being a “second-hand smoker” we are even more endangering ourselves, than those already deep in wickedness. Our spiritual senses, such as the Holy Spirit, and our conscience grow calloused and slowly are silenced as we involve ourselves and grow friendly with the world.
(Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”)
We even look like unbelievers because there is not really a difference between us and them. Even the others “smokers” can’t tell us from one of them.
(James 4:4b “Don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”)
God’s “senses” are much more sensitive, because He will not tolerate any sign of sin, and any of the stench. He is already sitting in the non-smoking section, and will not ever be enticed into stepping out into the place He is in. Here we see how we cannot have any sort of communication with Him, when He is perfect and clean and spotless, and we are just the opposite.
However, truth is---we can. If we keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” by keeping our senses sharp, and eyes open, our ears pricked, we can stay away from sin, and be able to have a relationship with Him. Not by our own works, but through Christ’s sacrifice, we can stand in the other room----the non-smoking room. Clothed in His white, sinless garments. :)
This week, I encourage you, to walk worthy of His calling, by keeping your senses sharp, and by distaining sin, as He distains it.
"Lord, help us to hate sin, and love you more. . ."
~Rand Hummel