TIED UP IN "NOTS"

Tied up in “Nots”

Those who are youthful in the faith have a dangerous misconception that a walk with Christ is nothing more than what meets the eye. However, the entire point of having a Messiah was to save us from the roadblocks and barricades that Satan uses to hold us back and to try to bring us away from God (John 3:16-17). In the spiritual battle between good and evil, we should do more than just keep moving forward on the straight and narrow (Matthew 7:13-14), but to also not fall into the snares of Satan (Ephesians 6:11). We can see these snares even in the very first book of the Bible, Genesis (Genesis 3:4). Satan ensnared many people, but the most memorable were the first two: Adam and Eve. Although he never forced them to sin and never used any form of coercion, all he had to do was change one word in the statement that God had originally given them to tempt them to sin. The word “not” had considerable power in this circumstance. Throughout the Bible and even today in our lives, we will see Satan working to get us tangled up in “nots” just like Adam and Eve were whenever they had sinned against God.

There is one clear problem with temptation: Satan wants to get us to do things that we clearly do not want to do sobermindedly. Not by a means of force, but by a means of persuasion and temptation. He will use this method to devour our lives (1 Peter 5:8) and to have us willingly act out whatever he wants us to do instead of what God has created us to do. He can do things like tempt us to deny our fellowship with God (Luke 22:54-62) or betray Christ (Luke 22:48). Satan slowly and progressively works on our mindset to separate us from God through sin (Isaiah 59:2). Satan‘s attempts to entangle us in this world, though they are not to be underestimated, can always be avoided. Satan has no dominion over us, and if we are Christ’s, death also has no dominion over us. Christ has defeated death, and if we have Him as a covering for sin (Galatians 3:27), we will live through God‘s grace. The neglecting of our spiritual well-being is exactly what Satan wants in our lives, and he will do anything to make that happen.

The question stands: how will we overcome it? How can we escape from the snares and not continue to follow them? We know that we are told to flee from sin (1 Corinthians 6:18), and we know that the battle is already won as Jesus has said it is finished (John 19:30), it does not mean that this spiritual struggle will be easy to overcome. There is a reason that all have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In this life, on this side of eternity, we are still guaranteed to suffer. However, we are called to suffer for Christ rather than for this world, because we need to know and we need to remember that there is a reward after we pass on (1 Peter 4:1-6). While focusing on the reward and focusing on the sacrifice, we should have the motivation and the gratitude to continue to walk in the footsteps of Christ. Most importantly, we are supposed to have love in our hearts, like the love that God had for us whenever he sent his only begotten son. Therefore, we must stand firm in our faith because we have built it on the firm foundation (Matthew 7:24-27).

  Caden Conley