Several years ago in the fall I was driving up a gravel road just out of town and saw some does eating out in an alfalfa field. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw a huge buck a little further back. I don’t normally stop and stare, but he was so big that I had to. I stopped to take a look and then put my car in reverse. Before my car shifted directions for my closer look…he was gone. But the does, they really didn’t care. Hunters travel from all over the country to kill deer in our northeastern Wyoming habitat. When it comes to their harvest, they all seem to agree on one point, the bigger the better. The moral of the story is this, the buck got big because he got smart.
What kind of Christians survive the attacks of Satan? Smart ones. The Bible tells us that the “devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). It prefaces this with “be sober, be vigilant.” In contemporary simple Hulettite lingo, God is telling us to “be smart.”
What do smart, born again Christians do to survive the onslaughts of Satan’s hunting adventures? They choose good company (Psalm 1). They assemble together (Hebrews 10:24-25). They avoid the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:17-21). They walk according to the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16, 22-25). They pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). They humble themselves and lift up other members of the church with their spiritual gifts (Romans 12:3-9). They learn to be kind and forgiving (Ephesians 4:32).
And here is the best part, when the buck gets smart, he has to run away to survive. When we Christians get smart, the devil will flee from us! And when we stop to catch a glimpse of the devil running away, we will find comfort knowing that God does not only allow us to survive in this wicked world, He wants us to thrive!
“Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:7
“I have come that they may have life,
and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10