Woman to Woman: Stay Alert

My dear friend and pastor's wife has an outside cat that she feeds and waters. Recently they were out of town and a young man from our church went over to their home to take care of both the inside cat and the outside cat.

At our meeting this week, he was talking about the cats and his time taking care of them. He mentioned that the outside cat's water bowl kept getting muddy. Come to find out there is a raccoon that comes to the cat's water dish and washes his little hands, making the water muddy.

When a raccoon -an animal who has been digging in garbage, digging in the dirt, digging around in storm drains- comes and puts his hands in a clean water dish just one time, the water becomes undesirable and undrinkable to the cat, it becomes gross.

The more I thought about this, the more I could see a parallel between this situation and our lives. The enemy has his hands digging around in sin and evil. When we allow him to come in and wash his hands in our lives, when we allow him to come in and muddy our water, we allow sin to take root and grow.

Don’t give the devil an opportunity.
Ephesians 4:27 CSB

Satan is always lurking, always around the corner waiting. Just like a raccoon doesn't come out in the light of day, he waits for the nightfall, he waits to be alone, satan is sneaky and tricky, waiting on the "nightfall."

Yes, these days sin is more blatant than ever. We know the evil ways of world, the garbage that is shoved in our faces day in and day out. That is all satan. However, he also uses trickery. He knows he can't have our soul, but he'll make us too busy to read the Word of God. He knows our finances are tight, so he'll whisper that missing our tithe and offering is okay this once. He knows we've been struggling to connect with our spouse, so he shows us all the things we are missing by being with them. He uses misunderstandings, offense, busyness, illness, exhaustion, and more to rob us -often without us even realizing what is taking place.

We have to be careful to not give the enemy opportunities. We have to stay alert, prayed up, in the Word, in church, and obedient to God. And when he attacks, we need to be aware who our real enemy is and fight the battle in prayer.

Don't let the enemy have opportunities to blindside you. Don't give him opportunity to muddy your life with sin and evil. Stay alert.

Discussion:
1. Where have you noticed the enemy attacking in your life recently?
2. What are you doing to fight him?