Taking a lesson from password protection

By Cindi Shroyer

I have so many Inter­net accounts! And each has a dif­fer­ent pass­word. That’s for safety, you know. At least that’s what they tell us from the “offices” of Internet-land.

The prob­lem for me, and oth­ers I’ve dis­cov­ered, is that it is just plain hard to remem­ber all those pass­words. And per­sonal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers — don’t want to leave those out! Every account needs a dif­fer­ent num­ber or series of num­bers and let­ters and we are not sup­posed to write them down. Huh? How are we sup­posed to remem­ber them if we don’t jot them down somewhere?

I have a boat­load of scrib­bles all over the place that have these pass­words on them. I don’t think I have any­thing to fear from an Inter­net rob­ber though. I can’t remem­ber what the pass­words are for when I run across them, and nine times out of 10 I have attempted to log on to what­ever site and been denied. Then the process begins again. Send an email to myself to allow myself to cre­ate a new pass­word for that account that I use so incred­i­bly often that I can’t remem­ber how to access it.

I’m not overly sure they should put tech­nol­ogy into some of our hands!

I have one pass­word for one site that I doubt I will ever change. I use the account fairly often so I remem­ber the pass­word; and it is not what I intended it to be so it sticks even bet­ter in my aging grey matter.

The pass­word is sup­posed to read “road­signs” in a com­bi­na­tion of let­ters, num­bers and sym­bols. Note the words “sup­posed to.” I don’t know if it was a Freudian slip or a God-intended “mis­take” or just my fin­gers not find­ing enough char­ac­ters, but my pass­word really reads “road­sins.” Unfor­tu­nate leav­ing out that “g.” Totally messes up my point.

The idea came to me as I wasted time star­ing at a photo I took sev­eral years ago of the sun ris­ing and burn­ing off a dense fog that hung over a farm­ers’ field. A stand of trees is in the right cor­ner and in the fore­ground is a high­way guardrail. When I took the photo God impressed upon me the impor­tance of guardrails and road signs in our lives. So, look­ing at the photo, deep in thought about what my new pass­word should be, I thought, “Oh, road signs! Good reminder!”

Yeah. So is “road sins.”

When­ever I type that pass­word I am reminded of the sins I com­mit each day on the road through my life. Not occa­sional sins; daily sins. It’s some­thing we all do. That lit­tle lie to your wife — “That dress looks great, honey” — when telling the truth is right and what she really wants. Or, “the check’s in the mail,” said as you write it out and slip it in the envelope.

Mar­ginal, I know. Sin, no doubt.

Some­times as I travel and try to avoid the “road sins” I think I am more aptly iden­ti­fied with a pin­ball ping­ing off the guardrails and careen­ing all over the road with no sense of direc­tion. And though my photo clearly shows a ris­ing sun illu­mi­nat­ing the start of day, I find many days there may be lit­tle to no light on the road I am on — a def­i­nite detour, intended or not. There is light to illu­mi­nate the road signs.

“Your Word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path” (Psalm 119:105).

It’s so neat that the Word is our light, our lamp and our sword. We have the proper tools to use as we try to fol­low the road signs while try­ing not to com­mit road sins. You always need the right tools when your car breaks down. The Bible is cer­tainly the right tool when your life breaks down.

God is the Right One to post your road signs, the One who knows where you need guard rails. And He can take care of those nasty pot­holes caused by road sins. Pot­holes do major dam­age and are so decep­tive — could be a quar­ter inch deep or a foot deep. You really don’t know until you drive through it. Life’s pot­holes caused by road sins are the same — you never know how deep it goes until you step into one. You could just get your shoes a lit­tle wet, but you could also fall in and be up to your eye­balls in messy, dirty muck.

This week I started a Bible study with a group from my church on becom­ing an “r12” Chris­t­ian. I told my pas­tor that as I watched one of the two DVD lessons my heart start­ing doing its “Holy Spirit talkin’ to ya’” dance. That most likely means there are some changes com­ing. The speaker for this set of lessons said that once you choose to head the right direc­tion some­thing will test you, usu­ally within the first 24 hours. Yep, he got that one right. And it was less than 24 hours, thank you very much.

Part of the home­work is read­ing Romans 12 (what the r12 stands for) each day. So far, so good. And it is amaz­ing what dif­fer­ent road signs I can see in my life, and what sins come to the front of my mind to be dealt with.

So, here’s the les­son (and home­work) for this week — when you take to the streets watch for road signs that will direct you away from road sins. You should be able to keep clean that way; and you just might be able to assist a bro­ken down fel­low traveler.

And for your home­work — read Romans 12 every­day. It will take less than two min­utes and just might change the road you’re trav­el­ing on.

–

Romans 12

Liv­ing Sac­ri­fices to God
1) I beseech you there­fore, brethren, by the mer­cies of God, that you present your bod­ies a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy, accept­able to God, which is your rea­son­able ser­vice. 2) And do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and accept­able and per­fect will of God.
Serve God with Spir­i­tual Gifts
3) For I say, through the grace given to me, to every­one who is among you, not to think of him­self more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a mea­sure of faith. 4) For as we have many mem­bers in one body, but all the mem­bers do not have the same func­tion, 5) so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and indi­vid­u­ally mem­bers of one another. 6) Hav­ing then gifts dif­fer­ing accord­ing to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us proph­esy in pro­por­tion to our faith; 7) or min­istry, let us use it in our min­is­ter­ing; he who teaches, in teach­ing; 8) he who exhorts, in exhor­ta­tion; he who gives, with lib­er­al­ity; he who leads, with dili­gence; he who shows mercy, with cheer­ful­ness.
Behave Like a Chris­t­ian
9) Let love be with­out hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. 10) Be kindly affec­tion­ate to one another with broth­erly love, in honor giv­ing pref­er­ence to one another; 11) not lag­ging in dili­gence, fer­vent in spirit, serv­ing the Lord; 12) rejoic­ing in hope, patient in tribu­la­tion, con­tin­u­ing stead­fastly in prayer; 13) dis­trib­ut­ing to the needs of the saints, given to hos­pi­tal­ity.
14) Bless those who per­se­cute you; bless and do not curse. 15) Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. 16) Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but asso­ciate with the hum­ble. Do not be wise in your own opin­ion.
17) Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. 18) If it is pos­si­ble, as much as depends on you, live peace­ably with all men. 19) Beloved, do not avenge your­selves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is writ­ten, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
20) There­fore
“If your enemy is hun­gry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him a drink;
For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”
21) Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good. (NKJV)

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