In their book, Living a Power-Filled Life, Bill Tucker with Pat Maxwell talk about a four-hundred-year-old tree that crashed to the forest floor Over the centuries it had been struck by lightning fourteen times, braved great windstorms, and even defied an earthquake. In the end, however, it was killed by little beetles. Boring under the bark, they chewed away its mighty fibers until the giant of the forest lay broken on the ground.

How true it is, it’s the little things in life, which at the time seem harmless, but when you put them all together, they can cause great devastation. As another has said, “Many a marital grave has been dug by a lot of little digs.” And as the ditty puts it:

It’s the little things that bother us
and put us on the rack,
you can sit upon a mountain
but you can’t sit on a tack!

But the biggest danger of all is found in our so-called “little sins.” Eventually they will catch up with us and inch by silent inch will drive us farther and farther away from God. And as Edmund Burke said, “By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.”

Sins—large or small—are a spiritual cancer and unless we get the cancer, the cancer will get us. As God’s word says, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”² The good news is that God also says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”³

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, your Word warns us about the dangers of sin. Please help me to see and admit to my sins, confess them to you, and receive your forgiveness. And help me to resolve and overcome any habitual sin I may have in my life. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

1. Song of Solomon 2:15 (NIV).
2. Numbers 32:23.
3. 1 John 1:9.