1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour".
I by no means have a green thumb for house plans, I never have and never will! I’ve managed to keep a few plants alive…briefly…
However, I do have a friend who was born with two green thumbs. He has one of the most beautiful gardens I think I’ve ever seen in my life.
And more than once I’ve literally asked him to take me on a tour of his garden. And I must say this guy always learns a lot in that garden.
One of the last times we toured his gardens he showed me a garden spider at work. Actually, it wasn’t at work, it was really at dinner! It was just finishing “Filet a la Grasshopper”; which just so happened to be the latest insect to be caught in his web.
Now, while I was watching, another grasshopper flew into the bottom of that web a few inches below the spider. And since the web is sticky, he stayed there.
Well, Mr. Spider left his dinner, slid down this silk thread like a fireman would slide down his pole, and in a maneuver that you would have missed if you looked away for even a second, this spider spewed out a bombardment of silken thread that totally encased and imprisoned that grasshopper – like a mummy. It was over in seconds.
From the very moment that he touched the web that grasshopper never stood a chance!
Guess he didn’t read Isaiah 52:11, “Depart! Depart! Go out from there, Touch no unclean thing;
Go out from the midst of her,
Be clean,
You who bear the vessels of the LORD.” .
Amazing how much trouble just one touch can cause!
Now it’s not a spider you and I need to be concerned about. Well, maybe you are, but he won’t hurt you much.
You’re a lot bigger than he is. But what we need to be concerned about is a lion with a deadly approach, not unlike that of the spider. But God gives a sober warning.
1 Peter 5:8-9, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Jas 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
John 10:10 “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.
Resist him!…”
There is, this very day, a powerful, shrewd, spiritual destroyer who’s looking for a way to entrap you, to invade your soul, to take you where you never thought you’d go;
to devour you as dinner. Like the spider.
And in a very real sense, the Devil’s trying to get you just to touch his sticky web.
Like that grasshopper, you don’t intend to stay.
You don’t intend to become a prisoner.
You certainly don’t intend to lose everything.
In fact, Satan never tells you he’s going to do all that.
He just says, “Just touch this beautiful web one time.”
And when you touch the Devil’s web, you’re his. And what does he have planned for you?
Let’s look at 1 Peter 5:8 in a few translations.
“…seeking someone to DEVOUR” (CEB);
“…[FIERCELY HUNGRY], seeking someone to DEVOUR.” (AMP)
“…sneaking around to find someone to ATTACK.” (CEV);
“…looking for someone to ATTACK AND EAT.” (ERV);
“…looking for some VICTIM TO TEAR APART.” (TLB);
“…looking for someone to SWALLOW UP.” (NIRV);
“…The Devil is poised to POUNCE…” (MSG)
First, the word “devour” is defined as: “to eat greedily or to consume destructively.”
Its Latin Origin is “decorate”, from “vore” which literally means “to swallow”.
And then the word “pounce” is defined as: “to spring or swoop suddenly so as to seize or attack; to take swift advantage of a mistake or sign of weakness.”
And that’s exactly what the Spider, Lion, and Devil all do alike!
They quickly look for a victim who has made a mistake or shown a sign of weakness and then they swiftly take full advantage of it and devour or eat them greedily, consume them destructively, and swallow them whole!
And you my friend are the next target on the enemy's radar!
So what’s one of the first things you need to do?
1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour".
The key is “…WATCH AT ALL TIMES…”
The truth is, it’s always when we let our guard down that our enemy gains entry and victory!
This is why we need to follow the admonishment of Ephesians 4:27, “Nor give place to the devil.
The devil is always looking to gain an opportunity, which is why we have to be WATCHFUL AT ALL TIMES!
Let’s be honest, the truth is, you might be flying perilously close to that web right now by the relationships, or the relationship you’re getting into, by listening to what you’re listening to, or watching things that glamorize or trivialize, or “humanize” sin.
By the thoughts, you’re dwelling on. By the websites you go to, maybe you’re falling for some of Satan’s most successful web lies,
“Hey, just this once.”
“Don’t you deserve this?”
“Remember what they did to you first?”
“You know, so many others are doing it, right.”
“You won’t get caught.” “You can stop anytime you want to.”
“Would God allow it so close to you if He didn’t want you to be near it?”
“It won’t hurt.”
“No one will know.”
Or better yet, in the words of Scripture:
Genesis 3:1-8
1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave it to her husband with her, and he ate it.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Amazing how much trouble one little conversation with the devil can get you into!
They went from everything to nothing, by messing with the serpent!
Don’t let the same thing happen to you! Don’t fall for those lies.
Remember, once you touch the web, he can do what he wants with you, after all, you’re in his territory and on his property.
He has the legal right to take full advantage of the “foothold and opportunity” you’ve just granted him.
That’s the danger of allowing the wrong people access to your life!
Remember Ephesians, “…don’t even give the devil the opportunity…”
This means in our simple day-to-day vocabulary:
Don’t wait until the second phone call;
the third text;
the fourth picture;
the fifth wink;
the sixth ‘Let’s just grab some coffee
the seventh inappropriate Facebook inbox;
the eighth Instagram like under your 45-week-old picture;
the ninth ‘I was just checking on you.
or the tenth ‘that color looks good on you’!
NO!
At the FIRST sign nip it in the bud and shut it down completely, before it bites and shuts you down permanently!
The word ‘opportunity’ is defined as a favorable time or set of circumstances for doing something.’
And the word ‘opportunist’ is defined as ‘a person who takes advantage of opportunities as and when they arise, regardless of planning or principle.’
Lastly, the word ‘opportunistic’ is defined as ‘exploiting immediate opportunities, especially in an unplanned or selfish way.’
You see, the devil is just waiting for an opportunity to devour your
life,
family,
marriage,
reputation,
character,
integrity,
Ministry,
job,
and church.
The problem is, we don’t pay close enough attention to when ‘favorable opportunity moments’ arise.
Moments like those appear when you and your spouse have had a falling out, and the next picture that you see while scrolling through your timeline is an ‘old friend’ who’s ‘just a friend.’
They see you online and send you a quick, ‘It’s been a while, how are you doing?’
And some are slicker than that, ‘How’s your wife, family, church?’
Seems innocent enough until you make the fatal mistake of a response that opens the door of opportunity,
“Hey, thanks for checking in, it’s been a rough day, wife is so-so….”
And right at that moment, the Devil smiles as he pulls out his napkin, grabs his knife and fork, and sits down patiently waiting at the table for YOUR WHOLE LIFE to be served to him for a Devouring Dinner!
I warn you, the Devil is waiting for an opportunity because he needs a favorable time to attack.
He waits for those moments when you make the worst decisions, moments like when you’re stressed,
aggravated,
annoyed,
depressed,
angry,
lonely,
the feeling of low self-esteem and self-worth.
Feeling used and abused and abandoned,
taken for granted,
under-valued,
over-estimated,
and discarded.
He even waits for those moments when you’re dressed up in pride,
arrogance,
conceit,
and entitlement;
moments when you just know you look your best;
you’ve lost some weight;
your acne has cleared up some;
you’ve been promoted in the church with a new title,
position,
and chair;
your hair has more volume;
you started back at the gym; a Jezabel paid you a compliment on your way to work;
a coworker tells you how handsome you look in that suit.
See, the devil will always look for favorable times to attack you because you’re not expecting it!
You don’t realize that he’s an opportunist just waiting to take advantage of your ‘guard down’ moment so he can immediately exploit your weakness!
What people fail to realize is that you don’t always recover from a mistake or a willful decision to sin!
Some people have given the Devil a ‘favorable opportune moment’ that has caused them to lose their
marriages,
children,
jobs,
friends,
reputation,
careers,
and ministries and never get them back!
Forgiven does not mean you get to press restart with absolutely no consequences.
This is why you should always pay attention to what you’ll lose forever by what you gained for a moment.
Interestingly enough, while I was in my friend's garden I actually saw another spider and a grasshopper that landed just below his web.
The spider didn’t even move. He couldn’t touch that grasshopper if the grasshopper didn’t touch the web.
People of God, you render Satan powerless against you in the same way.
That’s why God said,
“Be self-controlled.”
“Be alert.”
“Resist him.”
Or in the words of James 4:7, “So submit to [the authority of] God. Resist the devil [stand firm against him] and he will flee from you.”
In a nutshell, Submit to God and Resist the Devil!
The word “resist” is defined as “to withstand the action or effect of; to refrain from.” Its Latin Origin literally means “to stop.” Which means
no blame game,
no excuses,
no reasoning,
no justification.
Simply, when the devil presents you an opportunity (that simultaneously presents him with an opportunity), stop him dead in his tracks through submission to God and resistance to him!
Remember what the Word of God says:
“13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
(James 1:13-15).
Sin, no matter how attractive, is designed not to hurt you but to KILL you!
Even when it looks like a ‘little’ temptation, it can grow really BIG before you know it!
That’s why we’re admonished to heed to
Song of Solomon 2:15, “Her Brothers Catch us the foxes, The little foxes that spoil the vines,
For our vines have tender grapes.”
LITTLE FOXES CAN DESTROY BIG VINEYARDS!
And so can what some would call ‘little’ sins!
I’ve yet to hear God give size to sin, but that’s what we do, especially when we want to justify what we’re IN because we don’t really want to come OUT!
However, today is your day to get free and stay free!
Because your life (here and the hereafter) are at stake!
Church, it’s too late in the hour to keep entertaining sin.
We’ve straddled this fence long enough, it’s now past time to choose a side and live by it and live like it because you can’t have your cake and eat it too, no matter how many times Chef Satan tells you, you can!
This is why we ought to also heed what the Bible tells us:
“Don’t become partners with those who reject God.
How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong?
(2 Corinthians 6:14-18)
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”
17 Therefore “Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you.”
18 “I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty.”.
If you don’t play around the sticky threads of sin and temptation, the one who wants to devour you can’t even touch you, because you have done what the Bible says!
You have resisted the one who would ruin you!
Listen, you’ve been flying pretty close to the Devil’s Web lately, too close?
Therefore, would you accept this as not just me talking, but a loving warning from God, “Touch the web and you will pay a price you never could’ve imagined!”
When sin looks good, remember that death is on a sticky web!
Our opening story gives us somewhat of a parable for playing with temptation and sin.
Because the first grasshopper that went into the web became dinner; the second one that got too close was wrapped up like you would leftovers for the next night; but the last one that didn’t touch the web, couldn’t be trapped by the web, nor devoured by the spider!
This is not a study telling you to get close but don’t get caught.
It’s a study warning you that you have no idea how many have died just being in the vicinity of sin and temptation!
The spider couldn’t touch the last grasshopper because he wasn’t close enough to catch it.
Likewise, if you don’t want the lion to devour you or Satan to steal, kill and destroy you, STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM THE WEB, THE SPIDER, THE LION, AND SATAN AS POSSIBLE!
You can’t blame someone for what they do to you on their private property that you willfully trespassed on!
The destroyer is waiting to wrap you up and make you his next meal.
Don’t let something happen to you that is preventable!
Therefore, start checking the company you keep,
the places you go,
the things you do,
all of them Publicly and Privately!
Reevaluate your habits; be honest and address your addictions;
readjust your attitude;
ask God for clear and concise thoughts and speech;
protect your character and integrity;
remember every choice comes with a consequence and others can suffer by association due to your unwise decisions.
Ask God daily to remind you that in the midst of every temptation He’s already provided you a way of escape and all you need is the discernment to see it and the wisdom to take it.
Pay attention to your attractions and triggers. Know your weaknesses and pray for covering.
Take personal accountability and responsibility to make you better.
Remember that eyes are watching you and ears are hearing you.
And most dangerous of all, is the fact that there are people you influence who follow you.
Don’t lead yourself or anyone else into sin! Don’t allow a dysfunctional emotional moment to cost you your life,
family,
Ministry,
purpose,
calling, and eternity.
Saints, God, and the Kingdom have need of you… Alive!
You have gifts,
Ministry,
calling,
and anointing to fulfill.
You can’t hang out with the destroyer and meet divine destiny at the same time!
So today is your day to choose Whom you will serve?
Tomorrow is not promised, and someone who thought they had another day realized that last night was their LAST night.
Don’t straddle the fence any longer. No more compromise! Ask the Holy Spirit to place in you a conviction that keeps you on the right side of God’s Commandments.
Spiders will continue to make webs, but grasshoppers don’t have to keep entering them!
Likewise, the devil will always make you demonic temptation offers that look like angelic opportunities.
However, you don’t have to be fooled, nor do you have to accept it.
Remember the Word of God:
“… lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices..” (2 Corinthians 2:11).
Don’t let the devil's ways trap you in his sticky web!
Many mice have died because they were so focused on the cheese that they underestimated the trap!
Don’t let it happen to you!
Don’t Become the Devil’s Dinner!
John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”
John 14:15, “ If you love Me, keep My commandments.”
John 10:4-5, “4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
Galatians 5:22-25, 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law. 24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
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