The other night as I was sleeping my wife suddenly woke me up (at 4am), saying that she thought someone was in the house, she said that the garage door was open a light was on and the door from the garage to the house was open. So, being the extraordinary husband-investigator that I am, I grabbed my 9mm...ok, well I don't have a gun but I did begin to look around and behind doors to see if there was a murderer in my house. After a couple of moments of looking my wife turned the light on in our master bath. Can you feel it? Yes, there, in the bathroom a mere few feet away from where we were sleeping, a dog. A dog about 60 lbs or so had managed to get into our house and was simply sleeping in our bathroom floor.

How did all this happen? A series of simple mistakes. The car was not all the way into the garage so the door went part of the way down and back up again, the door to the house must not have been latched perfectly, and we must have left the light on.

I finished checking the house and got the dog out (thankfully he was not rabid!). We went back to bed.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me before and it should never happen again! But, since it did I have done some thinking about it and realized that this dog situation is somewhat like our sin situation.

See, I didn't want that dog in my house, but because I wasn't faithful to ensure all entry points were secured it was able to come in. Sure, it was just a dog. But, isn't sin the same way? We go on about our life thinking all is good, and then all of the sudden we are getting woke up in the middle of the night with this giant sin in our life, we wonder, how in the world did that sin get here? Simple answer, all our entry points were not secured.

The Bible tells us to "guard our hearts". Why is that important? Well, what if instead of a dog in my house it was a murderer? Your heart is the core of your life. As the old saying goes, "what comes out of your mouth, comes from your heart."

Scripture also tells that the"devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."

In conclusion. If you don't make sure your garage door to your heart is closed sin is going to swiftly walk right in and eventually take over.

How do I secure myself from sin? "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

We have a process, make sure all the door knobs and dead bolts are locked, make sure the garage door really went down and now, my wife locks the door knob from the garage to the house. See, we don't want any intruders. We will even go to extra measure to ensure we don't get any.