The Hunted

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (I Peter 5:8 NIV)

I am a hunter in the unconventional sense.  Every spring through fall I hunt those cute little critters called ground squirrels (or chipmunks, depending on where you live) that dig tunnels underneath and around my home’s foundation.  But I don’t hunt them with a gun, but with a trap. And I’m good at it.  I take something they desperately want (birdseed) and place it in a trap.  Even if they are suspicious and cautious, they just can’t resist the lure of that bait.  Into the trap they go and the sound of it closing is music to my ears!  Got another one!

On my property, the ground squirrels are the hunted; in this life, it is we who are the potential prey.  The devil, our enemy, is on the prowl looking to capture and devour us. We would be wise to realize that because stealth and deception are the tools of his trade.  Like so many ground squirrels in my neighborhood, the trap door slams shut on us before we even know what has happened.  

The cleverness of the devil is found in his ability to know what bait to use, and he doesn’t always use the same one.  As I told our students this week, his bait for entrapping college students is often relationships—friendships or romantic relationships.  These are important to them and they long to have them; thus, they are very vulnerable to them being used in nefarious ways to entrap them.  But there are many kinds of bait that appeal to our debased desires—position and status to appeal to our pride; money to appeal to our greed; power to appeal to our desire for control; bitterness to appeal to our self-centeredness and desire for revenge; pornography to appeal to our lusts. All can and will be used to lure us into entrapment and destruction.  

Peter warns us to be “of sober mind.”  That is, we need to be thinking seriously and clearly about our enemy.  We so often give him a huge advantage from the outset by being naïve about his intentions.  Like the ground squirrels that only see the birdseed and not how it is being used, we so often ignore how good and innocent things in and of themselves (e.g., relationships, sexual desire, money, etc.) can be used against us. And we do so at our peril.

Today, consider carefully what particular baits are the most dangerous to you and plan your strategies to avoid being lured into the devil’s trap by them.  Be assured that you are being hunted. Your greatest defense is to be aware of his schemes and plan accordingly so as not to be ensnared by them.

© Jim Musser 2017