I once spoke with a youth minister who had some teenage girls in his youth group who were having some homosexual desires. The group spoke openly about this subject. The girls who were struggling with these temptations knew what the Bible says about the sin of homosexual behavior. However, they wondered if God wouldn’t let them have “this one thing”. Perhaps if they tried to please him in every other way, God might look the other way concerning their sexual choices.

Here are a couple of observations.

First, there is not so much of a generational gap when it comes to such matters as there is a spiritual gap. Some people of all ages believe the Bible is true. Yet some people of all ages wish that they could ignore at least a portion of what the Bible commands.

Second, we all have different temptations. We cannot pick and choose from among the Bible’s commandments, as if it were some type of spiritual buffet. For many of us, there is one particular sin—“this one thing”—that threatens to trip us up and cause us to stumble.

Hebrews 12:1 says, “…Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

What is the “one thing” that threatens to trip you up?

What are you doing to safeguard yourself against being knocked out of the race?