“He who splits wood may be endangered by it” (Ecclesiastes 10:9)

When Charles Spurgeon wrote this original devotion in 1866, he warned saints against small, seemingly insignificant, spiritual dangers in everyday life. “Your occupation may be as humble as log splitting, and yet the devil can tempt you in it. You may be a domestic servant, a farm laborer, or a mechanic, and you may be greatly screened from temptations to the grosser vices, and yet some secret sin may do you damage”.

What Spurgeon said, applies to the temptations of the internet: “Nowhere is he safe who thinks himself so. Pride may enter a poor man’s heart; avarice may reign in a cottager’s bosom; uncleanness may venture into the quietest home; and anger, and envy, and malice may insinuate themselves into the most rural abode”.

Social media: “Even in speaking a few words to a servant we may sin”.

Covetousness: “a little purchase at a shop may be the first link in a chain of temptations; the mere looking out of a window may be the beginning of evil”.

Take every thought captive: “O Lord, how exposed we are! How shall we be secured! To keep ourselves is work too hard for us: only Thou Thyself art able to preserve us in such a world of evils. Spread Thy wings over us, and we, like little chickens, will cower down beneath Thee, and feel ourselves safe!”

While sociologist warn against too much “screen time”, Christians need to be honest about what they derive from the internet. “All that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16-17).

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