Avalon Chronicles #55: "Taming the Lion"
Allen B. Clark allenbclark@aol.com
www.combatfaith.com www.combatfaith.blogspot.com
I Peter 5:8, "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." (NIV).
John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (NIV).
It is with some trepidation that I write this message and introduce a spiritual topic either mis- or un-understood by many. There are those that will think skeptically of me for introducing what I believe about spiritual warfare and demonology. If you think that, hold your judgment until you read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, the eminent Oxford University scholar and prolific author. I am 73 now and I do not know how much longer my good Lord will allow me to serve Him, so I am not going to be, as it is described, "politically correct," especially five years into my Chronicles writings.
In one of my daily Scripture readings I came across the concept of the relative safety of airline travel considering how many flights criss-cross our globe each day. This is because the industry, at least in the United States, is highly-controlled through regulation. With government oversight and industry supervision there are many checks, rules, and laws which minimize accidents.The theory spiritually is that the devil (Satan) has to work very hard to effect disasters because of the control of the aviation industry. The devil has a harder time in airline travel to kill and destroy through causing accidents.
The hypothesis of control and regulation has its comparability in our own lives. Bad things happen to good people and obviously likewise to bad people. In my daily prayers I pray for protection of my family and others from benign neglect, malicious intent, and "stupids". When we are not controlled and alert in our daily actions and behaviors, we make mistakes with negative consequences. The malicious intent danger to us relates practically in our worlds to those who would do us harm and in the spiritual realm to the devil, that "roaring lion," who targets us in our weak areas to wreak havoc in our lives and to take away our lives.
We have a dear and close ministry friend, Everett Cox from Oklahoma City, who has a deliverance ministry (www.delmin.org). He has been a guest in our home and on a cable television program we produced years ago. My affinity for him partially is due to his being a fellow veteran. The benign neglect (and perhaps "stupids") we commit, as it relates especially to sins and withholding forgiveness, allows openings in some instances of "pathways of evil" that authorizes that "roaring lion" to assign a demon(s) in the legions of them he commands to enter our spirit and take us down and work us over.
Those "pathways of evil" to enter and control us must be closed through control and self-regulation just as for airplanes. At my website (http://www.combatfaith.com/QandA.html) I discuss the technique I have learned to close those "pathways" or "doorways" so that the one, who comes to steal and kill and destroy, cannot "devour' us. The closing process requires constant and disciplined confession of our sins, big and little, forgiveness of all others as well as ourselves, and a persistent reflection and examination of our negative attitudes, motives, and emotions. This process is worth considering and implementing. Try it. You'll like it and it will also bring you to a closer relationship with our Savior and Lord, Jesus the Christ, who desires us to live a life of peace in harmony with Him and in victory over our enemy and antagonist.
