“Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Luke 10:19
“You just don’t have the killer instinct,” my Dad told me decades ago when I was a youth competitive tennis player. I was really good at the sport, I loved the sport, but that was all it was to me. A sport. I just didn’t have the highly competitive nature that perhaps would have made me far more successful than I was. Not to mention I was filled with fear and worry over my performance. Fast forward decades. I still don’t have the killer instinct. I tend to route for the underdogs. And I absolutely hate to kill anything. Even snakes. So imagine what happened when the Lord planted me on a property absolutely perfect for the numerous rescued dogs in my care that also happened to be a perfect setting for snakes. The first summer was okay. The second the same. And so on. Until the sixth summer came around. By that time I had already killed my first snake. It was a poisonous copperhead resting in the shade about 10 feet away from my 3-legged dog Traveler. Long story short. I was so upset about killing it that I actually cried! So much for the killer instinct. Along came my six year anniversary of living on the property. By then, I had long since ceased taking in new dogs. I was desperately tired from 20 years of rescue work with virtually no help in recent years. And I couldn’t stand the fact that I faced the worst summer of snakes I had experienced in my life.
One night, shortly after aggressively killing a copperhead in the near dark by the dog building, I tried desperately to fall asleep given my recent sleep issues and on-and-off-exhaustion and need to wake early the next day. Suddenly the Lord spoke to my heart. His words were so strong and astounding my eyes popped wide open and I became incredibly awake.
Satan is attacking you. Kill the snake. The Lord in those few minutes showed me something I desperately needed to see. I had no hesitation that night in killing the copperhead that could have killed me or the dogs. But I had been allowing Satan FOR YEARS to speak his lies to me without lifting a finger to destroy the works of his darkness. By that time, I had begun to use God’s strength by His Spirit through His Word to resist and tread upon Satan AT TIMES, but I was extremely inconsistent in this and much of the time simply let this heinous poisonous, dangerous, and deadly snake called Satan coil himself up by my feet and continually spew his venom at me. God was reminding me that just as I had learned to kill poisonous snakes without hesitation, I needed to put Satan in the place where he belongs – consistently. Crushed under my feet in the power of Christ and the Truth of God’s Word!
Is God speaking to your heart?