Are You Listening to the Serpent?
You and I live in the almost but not yet part of history in the Kingdom of God. We are redeemed yet we remain in a world that God created and is letting play out under his sovereign control. We are pilgrims, passing through attempting to be apart from this world and not part of it. Sometimes we win sometimes we fail.
Considering we live in a fallen world, that has been allowed by God to in part be controlled by the Powers & Principalities both human and Satanic, we only survive by God’s grace and mercy. Today we are tempted into sin and evil more than ever through the advancement of our age.
But if we look at the scriptures and reflect on today we can see that little has changed in our sinful human nature.
If we consider the events of the Garden of Eden and how Satan through the guise of an animal convinced Eve to be less than she was we can see that playing out in our lives today. The Serpent talks Eve into believing she is a goddess; “Has God really said?” What Satan is asking the woman to do is to discern good from evil apart from the word of God, to understand good and evil on the basis of how good and evil will serve her. This is exactly what the serpent continues to do in all of our lives and in the lives of all of the people that we are discipling, attacking the question of identity, what does it mean for you to be a child of God? If we don’t understand what it means to be a child of God, then we’re not going to be able to prepare people. In turn we will be unable to prepare ourselves to understand what this pull that comes with temptation is, because we don’t understand what it’s really about.
He comes upon you and I every day, the voice of that serpent in the wilderness. Just as Satan sought to persuade Christ, he seeks to fool us as well. He whispers you need to test your father to see to it whether or not he will protect you. You need to find a way to secure what you want outside of him.
Who are you? That is the question that comes with temptation from the world, the flesh and the devil. Which is why when we see people starting to move into falling for temptation, or when we see people who have fallen and who are caught in the middle of temptation, what we almost always see is someone who is trying to think through a different answer to that question, who am I? When we see infidelity in marriage it’s not about pursuing sex its about pursuing escape.
If we try to live our lives through our own physical and mental strength without God, we eventually are overwhelmed and then we start to listen to other voices. We start getting nostalgic for feelings of being back in high school or back in college, or someone without all of the responsibilities that one would have in a marriage or in a workplace. People who are addicted to pornography it’s not about a sexual desire. They are trying to escape from life by numbing himself or herself, to somehow escape from that question of who I am and what it is that I’ve been doing.
The Serpent keeps whispering in our ear.
Jesus Christ is our shepherd who will turn us and redirect us sometimes in a very painful way. We must learn to be sober minded and see that we are involved in spiritual warfare. When we see the people those around us starting to fall into sin, our response is escape. Our response is to say this is the war that we’ve been called to fight, and we’re going to fight it together. So, we must everyday continue in prayer to our Lord Jesus, who is always aware of what is going on in our life and is never shocked and is never turning us away.