As a Vine Chokes an Oak Tree so Will Sin Hinder Our Christian Life

I remember a massive oak tree on the farm where I grew up, and a vine covered its trunk. The vine started small and over the years the entire lower half of the tree was covered by it’s creepers. The mass was so thick that many birds had built their nests there. At this point the tree was in danger. This huge, oak tree was literally being taken over; the life was being squeezed from it. But my dad had seen the danger and had taken a saw and cut the trunk of the vine with one neat cut across the middle. A tangled mass of the vine’s branches still clung to the oak, but the vine was now dead. It  would gradually become obvious as weeks passed and the creepers began to die and fall from the tree that there was victory over the vine. How easy it is for sin, which begins so small, to grow until it has a strangling grip on our lives. Christ’s death has cut the power of sin. The “creepers” of sin still cling and have some effect. But sin’s power is severed by Christ, and it gradually falls away. (Lou Nicholes - Missionary/Author).