THE FLY

This morning on my way to work (I was taking a lift with my brother Felix since I’m still having a problem with my car!); a fly got in and began to bother us! Felix and I were flailing our arms and smacking the air in a bid to kill the fly but to no avail. We even put all the windows down but still the fly refused to go out of the car! Eventually, I did manage to catch it and crush it in my palm!

How did I do it? Well … I remembered how uncle Joaquim would excel in catching flies at breakfast table in Goa. He had a simple technique. All he did was to grab them AGAINST their ‘path of flight’. If one tries to do it from behind them, they will always get away as they can take off pretty fast … but always forwards! They cannot take off backwards. This knowledge really helped sort our fly problem today J

So knowledge applied gave a good result!

This example of the fly can be used to illustrate many lessons, but for now I’d like to write about just one. Satan has been defeated by Christ and has no means of getting to us except through interfering with our thought processes. Just like the fly in our car, he can enter our minds and create a great disturbance by causing doubt and confusion. Some of us fall prey to his vile ‘suggestions’ and fall into sin or even enter depression. Some try to expel him for good but struggle in the process because they do not know the ‘technique’ to do so!

Actually the Bible has a simple instruction of how to get rid of this ‘pest’ … “ Resist the devil and HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU “ – James 4:7

We resist the devil when we listen to God, agree with him, submit to his wisdom, purify our hearts, mourn and weep etc. It might be that we will need to resist the devil as Jesus did, but the process and the battle is just the same. It's all about who I will ignore and who I will hear. I will ignore the devil and his "wisdom" and I will pay attention to God and learn his wisdom. When Jesus did battle with the devil, the battlefield was the arena of ideas, fought with scripture. Would Jesus pay attention to the devil or would he pay attention to God? What is really true and where are my loyalties? These are the same issues we face every day, whether we are facing a devil or our own double minded motivations.

Some of you may question 1 Peter 7:8 about the Devil being a ‘roaring lion’ … well, he may roar all he wants but as long as we Christians know that he has been defeated and that he has no influence on our lives as long as we resist him, we will do fine. If you’ve still not understood this point, take the example of a bully who is mightily feared but now is a quadriplegic. He can threaten as much as he wants but he can do nothing to you since YOU KNOW that he is restricted in movement!

GOT THE ‘FLY’? J