LIFESTYLE
Illustration★★★★“. He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are an obstacle in My path because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s” (Mt.
16:23). The story is told of a man who, resisting the cost of the oats he fed his mule, began gradually to change over to sawdust in its diet. Day by day, the animal was fed less oats and more saw- dust until, finally, it was all sawdust.
Everything went fine for a while—but by the time the mule became satisfied with saw- dust, he died of malnutrition. Our constant temptation is to change our spiritual diet from the ways of God to the ways of man. Often the changeover is a slow process. And if we’re not careful, we may get to the point where we don’t recognize the difference.
We become satisfied with the ways of man and, when this happens, we are spiritually dead.
The point
A man feeds his mule increasingly sawdust instead of oats; by the time the mule is satisfied with sawdust, it dies. Believers risk spiritual death when they substitute worldly ways for God's ways.