Not Doing Ourselves Any Favors

Adrian Peterson is arguably the best running back to ever play football. As of late, football is likely the furthest thing from his mind. Several weeks ago, cuts and bruises were found on Peterson’s 4-year old son after Peterson disciplined him with a switch. Peterson is now facing charges for “reckless or negligent injury to a child.”

In the midst of this investigation, Peterson has been under heavy scrutiny. His attorneys have stood by his side and made statements to try to improve his imagine before the public. For example, a couple of days ago Peterson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin, said, “This is a really good man that I am incredibly proud to represent. This is a case about parenting decisions and whether something unfortunate happened when a parenting decision was made by a man who believes strongly and loves his children very much…I will tell you this, this man loves his children dearly. He is a really good guy (Yahoo Sports).

Sadly, on the same day as these glowing remarks, Peterson told a court employee during a drug testing that he had “smoked a little weed” (ibid). Beyond the negative spiritual implications this has, smoking marijuana also directly violates Peterson’s bond conditions. To make matters worse, allegations recently came to light that Peterson abused funds from his charity to pay for a sexually promiscuous party a few years ago. All of this is compounded by the fact that Peterson is known to have at least six children from six different women. For a guy who is trying to appear favorably to the public, Peterson has not done himself any favors by his bad choices in the past and the bad decisions he continues to make.

King David once found himself in a bad situation. It all started with one mistake; David lusted after Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2). This led to many more mistakes. He inquired further about Bathsheba (3), he met up with her (4), he committed adultery with her (4), he tried to cover his sin by deceiving Bathsheba’s husband Uriah (5-12), he got Uriah drunk (13), and he eventually had Uriah murdered under the disguise of war (14-17). Like Peterson, Kind David didn’t do himself any favors by continuing to sin. Everything could have been much easier if David had just stopped making mistakes.

However, before we start pointing fingers, let’s not forget that we too can fall into this same trap. We have all made mistakes in our lives (Romans 3:23). The problem is, sometimes one sin opens the door to more sins. Sometimes one mistake leads to many others. We aren’t doing ourselves any favors when we continue to make mistakes.

We cannot give Satan an opportunity into our lives through sin (Ephesians 4:27). Let’s stop the spiritual bleeding. Let’s quit making mistakes and start working towards improvement. The goal is to be right before God and be with Him in eternity. Let’s never lose sight of this goal and do whatever it takes to be right with Him!