James 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Carl Armerding wrote a funny story in Moody Monthly, about his experience at the zoo. “As I stood there,” he said, “an attendant entered the cage through a door on the opposite side. He had nothing in his hands but a broom. Carefully closing the door, he proceeded to sweep the floor of the cage.”
He observed that the worker had no weapon to ward off an attack by the beast. In fact, when he got to the corner of the cage where the wildcat was lying, he poked the animal with the broom. The wildcat hissed at him and then lay down in another corner of the enclosure.
Armerding remarked to the attendant, “You certainly are a brave man.” “No, I ain’t brave,” he replied as he continued to sweep. “Well, then, that cat must be tame.” “No,” came the reply, “he ain’t tame.” “If you aren’t brave and the wildcat isn’t tame, then I can’t understand why he doesn’t attack you.” Armerding said the man chuckled, then replied with an air of confidence, “Mister, he’s old — and he ain’t got no teeth.”
Such is the devil in our lives when we realize that God is for us! We should be like the attendant. He knew that cat couldn’t hurt a fly. Satan will make a big ruckus, fussing and growling all he wants but we need to keep our eyes focused on our Lord.
Are you being growled at today? The enemy would love nothing more than to make us feel powerless against him — but “he ain’t got no teeth” next to our Lord! Let’s turn to God and put our trust in Him. If God is for us, who can be against us?!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]F.B. Meyer once said, “The education of our faith is incomplete [till] we learn that God’s providence works through loss…that there’s a ministry to us through the failure and fading of things. The dwindling brook where Elijah sat is a picture of our lives.
Most people reading this passage tend to focus in on the fruit that is produced. Okay…But a closer look will reveal that the Lord is really focusing on the tree. The fruit merely demonstrates the quality of the tree. We have all encountered this: there are trees whose fruit is healthy and delicious, and there are trees whose fruit is scarcely edible, or even useless.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on in every person. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’. One is evil — it is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good…
There’s an interesting story about the great English actor, Macready. A respected preacher once asked him, “I wish you would explain something to me.”
We live in a day and age that everywhere we turn, there’s a “self-help” theory. Books, videos and dvds, websites, world-renown speakers, you name it — all dedicated to helping us “feel good about ourselves”. Yet somehow, still many of us struggle with self-consciousness, even as Christians!
Early in the last century, sculptor Gutzon Borglum gazed at the cliffs of South Dakota’s Black Hills. As any great artist would, He saw what no one else could the sculpted faces of US presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. After 14 years, he finally completed his project — Mount Rushmore.
Counselors, encouragers, and people who offer care to others often encounter those whose past failures threaten to define them and hinder their development, healing, and sanctification. Our enemy capitalizes on our failures and regrets, pressing home the current influence of what we could have, would have, or should have done, if only we were wiser, more courageous, honest, or godly.