It looked like Green Acres around our house yesterday. Zsa Zsa in her movie star sunglasses and her gardening gloves took to the weeds like a...movie star in sunglasses. It seems that every Saturday I have planned to get things cleaned out and ready for planting it has rained or been ridiculously cold! These 80 degree Mondays don’t help me much! So, Thursday I came home and cleaned the house feverishly so that I could have Friday to do some things outside. Admittedly, I spent most of the day SITTING in the sun but who’s watching?
As I was raking out the herb garden I came to a corner that was full of leaves and other debris from the winter piled a mile high next to our deck. Our deck sits pretty low to the ground so there is only about a foot distance between the bottom and the ground - just enough for critters and small vermin, varmints and other distasteful forms of rodents and/or reptiles. As I began to rake away the leaves I was pensive, standing a good four or five feet from the pile as I held the rake by the end of the handle. I gingerly pulled one layer back at a time, sure that I would meet my demise or lose an arm in the process.
At one point, I called out to Kraig and asked for his assurance that there wasn’t anything that would slither out of the leaves unexpectedly. True to form, he laughed and took every opportunity imaginable to make fun of my phobia! Thanks honey! But, he was also quick to say that anything that would have lived under that pile was probably long gone after all of the ruckus I had made in the process! Sure enough, by the time I finished, I hadn’t come across anything more frightening than an earth worm, a few snails and several bees that weren’t too happy with me!
While I was taking all of this care with making sure I didn’t encounter a real ssssnake...there I said it, snake - which by the way, I think are the most unnatural looking things in the world. The way they move, how they eat, the way they can fit themselves into the most peculiar positions. Needless to say, they creep me out! I will do all I can to avoid the path of a snake at all costs! Okay, don’t even act like you don’t know what I’m talking about!
Anyway, as I’m raking I got tickled with myself because I can only imagine how I looked! But then, it’s like the Holy Spirit said, “When was the last time you took this much caution to avoid the Serpent, your adversary, the Devil?” You know, Satan can cause us much worse than most snakes ever could but rarely do you see anyone running from him! Most of us don’t believe there is a devil and if we do we think he’s just a cunning man in a dark suit with a pitch fork and a cigar. (Think Hugh Heffner with a devious grin.) And, if we do believe he exists, we don’t know much about him. We have even given ourselves over to blaming God for sin and evil rather than the father of lies!
Scripture says that Satan masquerades as an angel of light! He is also described as the great deceiver, the tempter and the accuser. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Let me translate - he doesn’t look like the boogey man! He isn’t walking around with a name tag on his shirt that says, “Hello, my name is the devil!” No, instead he masquerades as fun, fleshly indulgences that satisfy our desires and leave us empty. It says in James 1:13-15 that “God cannot be tempted, nor does He tempt anyone but each one is tempted when he is led away by his own desires and enticed and when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and when sin is full grown it brings forth death!” Satan points the way for our desires and when our desires have been satisfied by sin he accuses us, shames us and condemns us over and over again!
Girls, know your adversary the devil! He “walks about as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, resist him and he will flee from you” (1 Peter 5:8; James 4:7) Be circumspect! Walk around and around those things that seem tempting for the moment before you dive in! Ask yourself, “does this glorify the Lord or does this seem right in my own eyes? How could this choice affect me tomorrow, next week, ten years from now? He is there, just beneath the surface, waiting...but he won’t jump out and say “Sin is right this way, follow me” but rather “Has God really said ‘you shall not have...?’”
SOO TRUE!!!
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