My soul, never laugh at sin's fooleries, lest thou come to smile at sin itself. It is thine enemy, and thy Lord's enemy.
Interpretation
Avoid trivializing or mocking sin, as it may lead to accepting it.
This quote by Charles Spurgeon warns against the dangers of treating sin lightly. By ridiculing what is fundamentally wrong, one may inadvertently develop an affinity for it, thus distancing oneself from one's moral values and the divine perspective on sin as an adversary.
In practice
In a sermon to warn against the dangers of trivializing moral failures.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
I was trundling around with my inadequacies, and inner pain and loneliness. I yearned, desperately, to be something. I yearned to get out from where I was ... some deep discontent within myself, actually some deep dislike of myself.
To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up. I tightened myself like a bolt. I inserted myself in a vise-clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built. I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
As you care less about what people think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves.
A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine.
When a storm comes, it is the trees that get uprooted. Be as humble as the grass and nothing can touch you.
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