Like a Lion Roaming for Prey

I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the LORD
Ps 40: 1-3

It has occurred to me how unaware many of us are of the enemy’s schemes. We fall for his schemes and end up in a miry Pit. Of course we don’t start off in the Pit. We take a slippery slope down into the Pit. Or perhaps life just throws us down there. And as if being there isn’t bad enough, getting out is more difficult than falling in. Having been in the Pit, I can accurately describe what it’s like. Not only do you feel weak and confused and don’t know how to get out of the Pit, in that place you lose hope and motivation to get out and walk in freedom. Eventually, you feel a sense of hopelessness as the result of failed attempts to get out. Perhaps as a result of that hopelessness, you also feel apathetic towards God. Though in your head you may know God is the answer, the reality is that you lack the desire to seek and pursue Him.

I want to address something thats really troubling me. I am seeing in my own life and in lives of others around me how many of us have ended up in the Pit as the result of a process that has started long before we fall into the Pit. This, I believe, is where the scheming of the enemy starts. Satan starts the set up for the fall long before it happens. Before the temptation, the Enemy makes us ripe for the picking. He lulls us to sleep so we are unalert, we dont even see whats coming. We neglect intimacy with God out of our prosperity. Then many of us drift away from community. This isolation from God and from God-loving people is a deadly combination. When a weak animal is separated from its pack, the lion is ready to stalk and attack.

Things are not particularly awful, so we think we do not need God. Sadly, when the storm does hit, we are completely unprepared. I think we can all see how this is true in the case of an addiction. The process that makes an individual vulnerable to addiction begins before the action. It’s as if the individual is teetering on the edge of a cliff. All it takes is one incident to push them over the edge. All it takes is a painful life experience and roots of addiction start sinking their teeth into that individual. In this instance, the individual is using sin to self-medicate. They need something to counter the pain.

In-Dependence

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

As a child in life you are dependent on your parents for everything. As you grow up, your parents prepare you for a life of independence. Maturity equals being able to take care of yourself and make your own decisions. For most of your life your parents prepare you for this, with the end goal being your self-sufficiency. But lately I am realizing how the Christian life is opposite of this in every way. Though you are maturing in your faith and growing spiritually, your dependency on your Heavenly Father is meant to be ever-increasing. You must rely on Him for everything. The end goal of the christian life is not self-sufficiency rooted in a confidence in your own abilities. It’s God-confidence, rooted in His abilities.

Where there is pride, we lose sight of our need for God and then begin to act apart from Him; we lose sight of our need for His love and grace. Often this is a very subtle mindset. You dont wake up one morning and think “I dont need God.” Instead, it’s subconscious. For me it started when I became too busy for God or when I started to look to something/someone else to meet the needs of my heart. What happened was my appetite for God became dull.

Then I reached a place of apathy, especially because for the most part things in my life were going good. Naturally, as a result of my prosperity I didnt feel a desperate need for God. In that place of prosperity I started to feel a lack of drive to really seek God because of the mindset that I didnt need Him. Then subconsciously I succumbed to the mindset that I needed God when things were hard, but not when it was good. Prosperity certainly does not lend itself easily to desperation.