"Opossums"

"And stay ye not, but pursue after your enemies, and smite the hindmost of them; suffer them not to enter into their cities: for the Lord your God hath delivered them into your hand." Joshua 10:19

If you know anything about a opossum, when it feels threatened or under attack by a predator, its defense is to "play dead". It will drop where it is standing and act as if it is dead. You can poke it, push on it, try to arouse it but it doesn't move. Sometimes it is very hard to know if it really is dead or not. Just about the time you finally decide it is dead, it gets up and runs away.

Too many Christians are acting like opossums. When the enemy comes, they "play dead". What I mean by that is they won't face the enemy, they try to ignore him, they act like he isn't there, they roll over and do nothing. Acting like a opossum is not God's chosen action for us. He never told us to ignore the enemy or act as if we are unaware that he is there. He told us to "fight the good fight of faith". He has called us to face the enemy and use the weapons we have been given to defeat his attacks.

We don't have to cow down to the enemy, greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. We have been given power over all his powers. We are more than conquerors through Christ- who has already won the victory for us. We aren't to ever "play dead" in the face of the enemy, we are to pursue and defeat him. When facing Goliath, the armies of Israel "played dead"- they tried to ignore him in hopes that he would go away. Of course he didn't. Ignoring the enemy doesn't make him go away. The only way to deal with him is by "fighting" him. David went out to fight Goliath and the enemy was defeated.

How are you responding to the attacks of the devil, your enemy? Are you trying to ignore him? Are you "playing dead" hoping he will leave you alone? Or are you standing up and facing him full of the strength and power of the Lord? Facing him, not ignoring him, is how you defeat him. When a opossum plays dead, its attacker will leave it alone and go away. If you roll over and play dead when the devil is attacking, he won't leave you alone, he will continue to taunt you until you stand up to him.

Have a great day. We don't fight the devil by rolling over and playing dead.

For further reading:
1 John 4:4
Ephesians 6
Romans 8:37
Luke 10:19
2 Corinthians 10:4

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Coffee Break is a morning devotional written by Lorraine Ezell
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