Behold, You have driven me out this day from the face of the land, and from Your face I will be hidden… – Genesis 4:14, Amplified Bible (AMP)

Imagine that there is something you want to do really, really badly. You want to do it so badly, you are sick with anticipation and with longing. The problem is, what you want to do isn’t something you are supposed to do. The action you wish to take is wrong through and through, but you want to do it so much, you do it anyway.

After you commit your transgression, you are found out. The authorities try you, find you guilty, and banish you to a far off land.  You lose the people you love, you lose the work you love, and there is no chance that you will ever be able to come back. What you have lost is lost forever, and now the question that will haunt you the rest of your life is this: “Was it really worth it?”

When our passions are driving us towards sinful actions, we rarely take the time to consider the consequences of those actions. But consider we must, for if we don’t, we very well may end up like Cain. After Cain murdered Abel, God banished him from His presence as well as from the land he loved to till. As a result, the rest of Cain’s long life was hollow, bitter, and lacking in joy. I have to believe that, if he had known before his punishment what he knew after his punishment, Cain would surely have NOT killed his brother.

In order to avoid Cain’s fate, we should learn from his mistake, and instead of acting on our passions, we ought to disconnect from them long enough to take a glimpse into the future. “What will happen after I do this?”, we should ask, and if the answer is that God’s wrath will fall on us, we should kick our passions to the curb.

Granted, disconnecting from our passions is much easier said than done. It’s not that hard, however, if we rely on God rather than human will power to accomplish the task. At the first sign of temptation, we ought to pray for God to intervene, to help us foresee the consequences of what we want to do, and to realize that the consequences of sin just aren’t worth it. If we don’t pray such a prayer at the first sign of temptation, we will allow the temptation to get a foothold in our passions, and before we know it, we will have committed something horrible.