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Hairpin Curves

by Steve Klein

Hairpin curves.  The winding mountain roads that I drove as a young man in Colorado had many of them.  You'd be traveling east, hit a hairpin curve, and suddenly you're headed west!  The curves were difficult to navigate, but they were necessary.  Without them, the road to the mountain summit would be impossibly steep and dangerous.

Repentance is like a hairpin curve.  We're traveling down the road in sin.  If we keep going in the same direction, we'll wind up driving off a cliff to eternal destruction.  We must make the hairpin curve.  We must completely change direction.   Truly, "The way of life winds upward for the wise, that he may turn away from hell below" (Proverbs 15:24).  The Lord wants us to make it.  He is "not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance"
(2 Peter 3:9).  The person "who would love life and see good days" simply must "turn away from evil and do good" (1 Peter 3:10-11)

If you are driving along out of control at breakneck speed, you will spin out on the curve.  The secret to making it is to slow down and get yourself under control.  According to 2 Peter 1:5-10, self control is one of several qualities that a Christian must possess in order to make sure of his salvation and prevent a terrible fall to eternal destruction. 

It is one thing to recognize that you cannot keep going the same direction.  It is quite another to get yourself under control, and turn the other way.  Out of a list of 9 men in the Bible who said, "I have sinned," perhaps only four actually repented. They were David (2 Samuel 12:13), Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1:6), Micah (Micah 7:9), and the prodigal son (Luke 15:18).  Those who recognized that they needed to turn but didn't include Pharaoh (Exodus 9:27; 10:16), Balaam (Numbers 22:34), Achan (Joshua 7:20), King Saul (1 Samuel 15:24, 30) and Shemei (2 Kings 19:20).  These men saw the curve coming and hit the gas instead of the brake!

What about you?  Is there a turn that you know you need to make?  Will you make yourself make it? 

 Other Articles by Steve Klein
Are We Doing Worse than Our Parents?
Are You Attached?
The Spirit of the Sadducees