• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“You’ve got to see this!” he said.

We followed him out to the furnaces in our garage, where he pulled the front panels off to reveal shredded plastic all over the interior. A rat had found his way inside both heating units, and he had eaten through all the condensation tubing. Once pressure was lost in the tubes, the furnaces automatically shut down.

After parts and labor, that rat cost us nearly $1,000 in damages. Then we put out poison and set traps. But it was only two weeks later that the varmint teed us up for another $2,500 in damages. This time he ate his way through an upstairs bathtub pipe that flooded our first-story ceiling!

To this day we’re not certain if the rat will return to wreak more havoc or if we managed to get him. But if we ever do find the rat, we plan to stuff him and mount him!

After all, that’s a $3,500 rat.

The Rat in Your House

I share this story with you because there’s a rat in your home too. The power of sin is a rogue agent that’s living in your house, your human body. And just like our rat did, sin can wreak lots of havoc. As new creations we’re dead to sin. But sin itself is still very much alive, just like that rat was still alive after we thought we’d killed it.

Imagine if the repairman had never discovered the damage or we had never attributed it to the rat. Maybe my wife and I would’ve blamed each other, perhaps even buying the idea that one of us had programmed the thermostat wrongly, or forgotten to change the filter, or even gone out to the furnace and chopped up all the tubing. That may sound silly, but similarly we Christians can beat ourselves up over the actions of the rat: “I’m a sincere Christian. I want to know God better and grow spiritually. So why do I keep dealing with these same old thoughts over and over again?” It’s crucial to recognize that there’s something in us that’s not us. There’s a force housed within our physical body that both tempts us and then controls us if we allow it. The source of our sins is a rat called sin.

Did you know there’s a rat in your house?

The Source of Sinful Thoughts

Many of us assume that we are the sum total of our thoughts, that we are what we think. But God is tipping Satan’s hand by revealing that there’s the presence of another. Not every thought we think comes from us. Not every idea that our minds are served originates with us.

I used to think that the loudest and most persistent thoughts in my head were from me. Of course they are, because I’m thinking them! Therefore, when temptations continued to nag, it must be me. My nature is showing itself to be sinful. I must be dirty at the core.

But by discovering the spiritual rat in my house, I can now see that I should judge a thought not by its volume or frequency but instead by its content. No matter how persistent a thought is, I can recognize that it is simply that rat once again trying to cost me a fortune in damages.

Our God is calling us to reinterpret every ounce of our thought life in light of what he has revealed. I’m a new creation, a child of God, with a new heart, a new mind, a new spirit, and God’s Spirit living in me. When we realize our newness, trust in it, and act on it, we live in reality. And the reality of our newness is confirmed, again and again, since thinking “God thoughts” is the only choice that fulfills us. Why? Because we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16)!

Frank Lloyd Wrong

My wife Katharine and I were married right after graduate school. We weren’t working with a large budget for our first home, but we knew we wanted something unique. After driving our real estate agent crazy for several weeks, we were ecstatic when she finally stumbled on a for-sale-by-owner 1908 Prairie-style home. It was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous American architect. Surrounded by traditional Victorian painted ladies, this house stood out from the rest. In fact, it was registered with the local historical society and on the city’s historical tour. The city respected the unique design