The Cure for Satan's Snail Bait
When I was teenager, I had a Pug/Pekinese mix dog named Chad. He was hyper and ugly, in a rather adorable way. His favorite game was to pull on pieces of rope with knots tied in the end. I had a good time swinging him around with those.
One night he was laying in bed with me, and he was drooling
a lot, so I kicked him off the bed onto the floor. The next morning, he was
unusually lethargic and had left a large puddle of drool on the carpet. I
tossed him in the back yard and as I was going about my routine, I looked in
the back yard and Chad was rocking back and forth, pushing his head in and out
of some bushes. I pointed this out to my parents, and they decided to take him
to the vet.
Turns out, Chad had gotten into some "snail
bait"(poison) my parents had in the back yard for the vegetable garden. Chad
thought it tasted good and had his fill.
The vet pumped his stomach and fortunately he survived to
pull on the rope another day.
Chad was a dumb mutt. He didn't know the difference between
wholesome food and poison. Like most dogs, he lacked discernment.
Humans are not that different. Especially as children. When
we are young it is dangerous how little we know of the world. It is common
practice for parents to put locks on cabinets to keep kids from getting their
hands on dangerous chemicals and ingesting them. Most medicines come with child
safety caps to prevent little ones from swallowing those pills and hurting
themselves. Little kids do not know any better. They cannot always tell the
difference between what is dangerous and what is safe, what is good and what is
bad.
We have to be taught what is safe and dangerous, what is
good and bad. Discernment does not develop spontaneously; it is something we
must learn.
While older humans are less likely to confuse a Tide pod for
a piece of candy, we still lack discernment in many areas and fall prey to
Satan's deceptions far too often.
Satan is great at blinding our eyes and confusing our minds,
and making it nearly impossible to tell the difference between what is safe and
dangerous, what is good and bad.
He presents us with beautiful deceptions. He dangles
delicious bait in front of us and we fail to see the hook it is hiding. He
offers us a dish of delicious food, and we can't detect the poison within.
What we often lack is the spiritual gift of discernment. (Hebrews
5:14)
I am writing from a Federal Prison, and I have witnessed
this lack of discernment in myself and so many others, often with tragic
results.
It was a lack of discernment in myself that led to me
becoming hooked on porn as a teenager. A similar lack of discernment made me
believe for year upon year that I could somehow fix my problems and overcome
the addiction on my own, despite my many, so many, attempts and failures.
I believed Satan's lie that porn was a good thing that could
satisfy the longings of my heart. I stepped right into his trap.
I have seen a lack of discernment in many others as well. One
believes he is above the law and can use a smartphone even though his PO tells
him he can't. Another believes a woman is his destined soul mate even though he
has wound up back in prison twice because of their relationship. Still so many
others continue in the same patterns of lawlessness and addictive behaviors
that got them here in the first place.
Satan's poison is destroying them, but they continue to eat
from the same dish.
God gives us discernment, and this allows us to tell the
truth from the lies. We can see past Satan's tricks to the reality underneath. My
goal in this post and the next few posts will be to unwrap what this
discernment looks like from a spiritual level and how do we develop and
strengthen this skill.
One of the first examples we see of discernment in the Bible
is in King Solomon. Solomon loved the Lord, and when it came time for him to be
anointed king, he made the worship of the Lord his greatest priority. One of
his first acts as king was to sacrifice a thousand burnt offerings to the Lord.
I am not sure if he did this all at once or across the space of a few months or
years, but he made glorifying God a key priority in his administration. Soon
after all those offerings, the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
"Ask what I shall give thee."
Here is what Solomon asked:
"...I am but a little child: I know not how to go out
or come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast
chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give
therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may
discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a
people?"(1 Kings 3:7-9)
Solomon recognized that his greatest liability was a lack of
experience and discernment and if he was going to be a successful leader he
needed those traits. And because Solomon did not ask for riches or power, God
granted him his request.
Solomon's discernment was powerfully demonstrated in a
particular case in 1 Kings 3:
"16 Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto
the king, and stood before him.
17 And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell
in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house.
18 And it came to pass the third day after that I was
delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was
no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house.
19 And this woman's child died in the night; because she
overlaid it.
20 And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside
me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead
child in my bosom.
21 And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck,
behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it
was not my son, which I did bear.
22 And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son,
and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the
living is my son. Thus they spake before the king.
23 Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that
liveth, and thy son is dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead,
and my son is the living.
24 And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a
sword before the king.
25 And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and
give half to the one, and half to the other.
26 Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the
king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her
the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither
mine nor thine, but divide it.
27 Then the king answered and said, Give her the living
child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
28 And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had
judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in
him, to do judgment."
Solomon demonstrated an unusual level of discernment here. He
was able to perceive that one of these women genuinely cared for the child, and
as such was the true mother. The other did not truly care for the child, only
her own selfish desires. One woman was telling lies and the other the truth. One
was good and the other evil. Most could not discern one from the other, but
Solomon was able to. This was a gift that God had given him.
God has promised us wisdom and discernment as well if we are
faithful to ask. We live in a world filled with fraud and deceit. We need godly
discernment so that we do not fall victim to Satan’s snail bait.
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