[Steve Myers] The other day I was walking through a wooded area and I must've come into contact with poison oak. After about, I'd say about a week my ankles started itching. It looked like a little mosquito bite or something like that. But then by about a day that kind of exploded. And so now if you take a close look at my face, which you might not want to do, I've got a rash all over my face from this poison oak because the oil that's in that plant is incredibly potent. And if you're sensitive to those things, it can really take off. Just a very few micrograms of that oil can create a nasty rash that will begin to blister.

Now there's two types of poison oak. One of them is kind of an interesting one because it's just called topical. So if I had gotten it on my ankle and it started to itch there and I had a little rash that would've been a topical rash. Now the other type is what's called systemic, and that's what I have. It started on my ankle and without even itching at all it has moved to other parts of my body. That's an interesting concept when you think about sin. That's what came to my mind. It wasn't that I was sinning as I was walking through the woods, but the fact that this evil oil got on me and spread throughout my entire body, through my system, and it appears in places that weren't even directly exposed to that poisonous plant.

Now that made me think of James 1:14. It says this in the Voice. Think of it in context with this poison. James says, "When a person is carried away with desire, lured by lust, and when desire becomes the focus and takes control it gives birth to sin and when sin becomes fully grown it produces death." Much like this rash from this poison oak. It started in a local spot, but then went throughout my entire system, and that's exactly the way that sin works.

You may think that sin is just localized in this one little area, but if you don't do something about it, if you don't get that oil off of your skin immediately that rash can become just terrible, and then if it gets into certain spots it can go out through your entire system. And that's kind of the way that sin works. If we don't do something about sin it will spread, and it will take us down.

So what do you have to do first? Get the oil off of you. Get that nasty poison off. It sounds like repentance doesn't it? We've got to change our way of thinking. We've got to get cleaned up, and stop the spread of sin. We've got to go to God and we've got to stop it from spreading. And of course that means get the help you need.

Sometimes you need extra treatments in order to stop the rash in its tracks. That's like what James is talking about. Go to God. In fact down in verse 27 at the end of that chapter it says that true religion, part of true religion is to keep yourself unspotted from the world (James1:27). You know I have this rash because it's itching and it's just annoying, but how much more so do we want to keep sin out of our lives? The doctors tell you if you're allergic don't mess with the plant. It's a lot like sin. God wants us to be sure that we don't mess with sin.

That's BT Daily. We'll see you next time.