A father walked by his daughter’s bedroom door which was cracked just enough so that he could see that she was kneeling beside her bed in prayer. Interested to find out what subjects a child would bring before God, he paused and listened. He was puzzled though to hear her reciting the alphabet: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G …" She just kept repeating it. He didn’t want to interrupt her, but soon curiosity got the best of him and he broke into her prayer. "Honey," he asked, "what are you doing?" "I’m praying, Daddy," she replied. "Well, why are you praying the alphabet?" he asked. She explained, "I started my prayers, but I wasn’t sure what to pray. So I decided to just say all the letters of the alphabet and let God put them together however He thinks best." 

Back in 1911, a stuntman named Bobby Leach went over Niagara Falls in a specially designed steel drum—and lived to tell about it. Although he suffered minor injuries, he survived because he recognized the tremendous dangers involved in the feat, and he had done everything he could to protect himself from harm.

Several years later, while walking down a street in New Zealand, Bobby Leach slipped on an orange peel, fell, and badly fractured his leg. He was taken to a hospital where he died of complications from that fall. He received a greater injury walking down the street than he sustained in going over Niagara Falls. He was not prepared for danger in what he assumed to be a safe situation.

Some of the great temptations that roar around us like the rushing waters of Niagara will leave us unharmed, while a small, seemingly insignificant incident may cause our downfall. Why? We simply become careless and do not recognize the potential danger. We mistakenly think we are secure (1 Corinthians 10:12).

We must always be on guard against temptation. A victorious Christian is an alert Christian who watches out even for those little “orange peels.”

By:  Richard DeHaan