Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Keith Simon.

One of the toughest things I experience as a pastor is that I often have a front row seat watching people blow up their lives.

The kind of blowups I'm talking about usually

involves some sort of moral failure that leads to the loss of the people and the things most

important to you. I had a friend who recognized he had a drinking problem. I got him in to see an

older woman who was both a Christian and a licensed counselor. She'd been a counselor in some pretty

tough places, including prisons,

so she wasn't easily fooled. At the end of the hour they spent together, she told my friend that

unless he made some significant changes, he would lose his family, his career, and his life.

That sounds really harsh, and I'm sure it was hard to say, but she was throwing him a lifeline.

Unfortunately, he didn't take it. And what she said would happen did happen. He lost all three.

Sometimes people blow up their life through an affair or gambling or giving into pride or anger.

What all these have in common is that they are inside jobs. No one can blow up our life quite like we can.

We are often our own worst enemy.

In 2008, a man named Jerome Carveille walked into one of the largest banks in France and quietly destroyed it from the inside.

He started by making small, unauthorized trades.

Nothing huge.

Nothing anyone would really even notice.

But each one required another one to cover it up. By the time it all came crashing down,

he had cost his bank nearly five billion euros, one of the largest trading frauds in history.

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