Becoming Prey Part 2: Drawn Away

Thanks for coming back to read the second part of this simple little bible study on becoming prey to the devil. Part 1 is not necessarily required reading for this blog, but you can find it here. We are not required to be prey. That is not our intended end. Thanks for reading!

Being Drawn Away

James 1:13-14  Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

In a world of consumerism, it is nothing for a person to be bombarded by thousands of advertisements daily. We hardly even notice them anymore, but they’re there, and sometime, on social media or in old-fashioned print, we have all purchased something impulsively that we HAD to have at that moment.

Somewhere the rational mind disconnects, and we seek to fulfill the desire of the flesh. It is hard enough to resist the external to not become prey to our flesh and the devil…but what about when the Trojan horse is already within us?

Becoming prey to the devil oftentimes means our first failure is at our own hands. Few can convince us like we can persuade ourselves through twisted rationalizing to turn a desire into a need.

James clearly states that God cannot be tempted with evil and refuses to tempt mankind with evil. God isn’t into the entrapment of humanity, laying out something sinful in nature as bait to the person struggling with their own carnality and then yelling, “Ah ha!” and swinging a sword of judgment because we fell for his trick.

This is anathema to who a child of God is empowered to be and the very design of Salvation. We are enabled and called to live above sin, which would be a tall order if the creator of the cosmos was seeking to entrap his own servants.

God never seeks to cause his sheep to become prey to the devil’s devouring ways but desires all of his flock to maintain their strength through the community that fellowship brings. The drawing away occurs when our desires overcome God’s will in our life.

These desires that draw us away from him are of a base carnal nature. They spring from the old us that seeks to be resurrected and can be when the conception of sin gives new life to old desires. Like the seeds of a weed spread into the garden, the world’s influences can ride on the wind and embed into that heart that God yearns to transform to grow his own fruit.

The heart is the most fertile thing in existence. It will grow anything. Unfortunately, in its base, unregenerated state, it desires to fill itself with all the wickedness that God saved us from.

Jeremiah 17:9  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Psalms 10:3  For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.

If God doesn’t control our hearts, it will drive us into battles we need not fight. It will stoke the fires of rebellion. The hardness of unrepentance. It grasps with longing fingers toward a world full of lust. The conception of those lusts WILL bring forth the fruit of its kind. Spiritual death. How horrible a delusion to be caught up in our heart’s own natural desires, blind to the twisting of our own natures and to boast in it. (Psalms 10:3)

James 1:15  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

When conception brings forth sin, thought becomes action, and the action separates one from God and the flock. Secretly perhaps, maybe no one knows physically or has the knowledge of what is going on, but rest assured the separation between God and Sin is as real and potent as it was when Adam and Eve were cast from the garden. 

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One note: Separation doesn’t mean God isn’t attempting to draw back the lost sheep. It doesn’t mean he has stopped loving the lost sheep. It doesn’t mean he is suddenly willing to allow that sheep to perish. On the contrary, he will attempt to provide every opportunity and extend every grace that one would return to the flock via repentance before final, more permanent spiritual death occurs. 

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This is why prayer, fasting, and Bible reading are so crucial to a child of God’s walk to weed out the bad seed. Prayer is communication and a form of worship to God. It allows us to draw nigh to him, and when we draw nigh to him, he draws nigh to us. He speaks into the hearts of men with his word through prayer to continue to sanctify and challenge us to grow. You could write an entire book on prayer, but suffice it to say that prayer is so powerful because we have the ear of the Almighty, and he is interested in what we have to say, our lives, and our needs.

Additionally, prayer is reciprocal. When we pray and seek to touch God properly, we submit ourselves to him, and as such, he can work in our lives in ways that we perhaps weren’t asking for in prayer but brings enlightenment, direction, or strength that we didn’t even know we needed. Praying in the Spirit is incredibly effective and necessary for this. 

Romans 8:26  Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Resisting the Fear of Potential

If you were to wander alone down a dark forest path, the sounds of nature would surround and envelope you. You are the interloper; you are outside of your own natural habitat. In this situation, most of us do not incur direct fear. Crickets, owls, and the odd screech of a bat do not disturb you overly much. 

However, when a large animal roars nearby, most would immediately be very alert, if not outright fearful. 

However, the truth is we do not fear the noise of the roar. We fear what makes the roar and what it could do to us. 

Immediately we image teeth, claws, and the raw power of a predator overwhelming us. There is something about the mind that races forward in wild imagination seeing the worst potential outcomes in the scenario presented to us, careening into dark depths with reckless abandon. 

How often have I counseled a person who, upon receiving news that was difficult to process, or even outright terrible news, immediately dove deep into the fear of the potential outcomes yet to be seen? They raced freely down avenues shrouded in darkness and gripped by fear. That fear causes one to run blindly through the brush and foliage of this life without direction from an indistinct and indirect roar of a lion. 

That roar is intended to trigger that blind fear in us, attempting to make us perceive power in the sound which reverberates and echoes around us. It seeks to drive us in the opposite direction of the flock and the Shepard in blind fear, losing all rational thought. All because we fear what would be done to us. 

2Ti 1:7  For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

The roar of the enemy of our soul cannot harm us. We can expose him from the shadow under the light of God’s Word and face him with the authority of prayer. Then he is revealed as no more than an opportunistic predator who relies on tricks and snares. When we submit to our Shepard, we are given the power to resist and cause that one who wants to be seen as the roaring lion to flee. 

Jas 4:7  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Thanks for reading and I hope I have encouraged someone to not be afraid of the roar, but to push harder in prayer, fasting, and faith to submit and resist in order to thrive.