Yesterday Bobby and I were enjoying a nice evening at home when “one of us” clicked on a link in an instant message and set a virus loose on our computer. Thankfully our Norton Anti-Virus detected it immediately and set our alarm at ease. It did not, however, help with the ad ware that supposedly was instantly downloaded onto our system. Dozens of pop-ups later and a long conversation with our computer savvy friend, Brad Smith I was assured that the problem was solved.

I found it interesting how wonderfully slow and quiet our night was unfolding. Just after 10pm I was already getting ready to go to sleep, but in one moment, that entire plan changed. I could have just gone to bed and taken care of it this morning, but I wanted to make sure it was all okay. These pesky ad wares so easily just took over my night and had me yawning all this morning at work. The moral of the story is this: You never know what’s going to happen, so always be ready for anything. Use discernment when clicking on random instant message links and be ready to do what it takes to fix things correctly when something goes wrong.

Naturally the lack of discernment involved in the clicking of random links in instant messages last night had me thinking about John MacArthur’s book Fool’s Gold: Discerning Truth in an Age of Error that I am reading right now. He keeps talking about how when we lack discernment it brings deadly consequences into our lives. He may not be referring to poor dicernment allowing a virus to take over our computer, but I can see from that instance how it is critical to excercise discernment in so many other areas of life. MacArthur’s words always seem to be a plea for believers to be devoted to Biblical discernment helping remind us that: