It Is Still DEAD

I pray that what you read will touch your life as it has touched mine. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” This is good news isn’t it? Seeing this in our lives signals a change, a coming of something new. Thanks to Christ, we are set free from the missteps and sins of the past. Hallelujah! We are no longer tangled up in the world system and the cruel demands of sin that come to choke us out and keep us destined towards hell. We are free. Jesus promises us that if the SON therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed! John 8:38.

Well, I have been meditating on this fact over the past month and wouldn’t you know it, those snakes showed up again. Yes, they did. Did you know that after you cut the head off a snake, when you pick up the body to dispose of it, that snake will coil itself around your arm? Yes, it will. I promise you I am not making it up. Google it if you must. The snake is dead, but it is wrapping itself around you. If you are not on your game, you think the thing is still alive, but it is dead. This is important because, for many of us, salvation brought freedom from many things, not one thing. Deliverance is our portion and promise. But it feels like those things are still evident in our lives. Those thoughts pop back into our heads, those emotions well up inside of us, that attitude presents itself, that hopelessness tries to choke you out, that low self-esteem seems to be suffocating you. And the list goes on and on. Snakes. Most importantly, DEAD SNAKES. As mentioned last month, the head has been severed and crushed, not by us, but by the redemptive work of Christ on the cross in obedience to his Father. That snake in your life is STILL DEAD.

What gets us is that we respond to these snakes like someone who is experiencing “Phantom pains”. This is a phenomenon in which a limb or organ has been removed and the person still experiences pain in that region. You can not be having a cramp in your right leg if your right leg has been removed! You cannot be having menstrual cramps when you have had a complete hysterectomy because you have no reproductive organs in your body. It is a phantom pain. I bring this up because in the spirit, we are responding to these dead snakes the way a patient would respond to phantom pain. WE GIVE INTO IT. We stress about falling short when we “thought” we were delivered. We fall into despair because for so long we felt healthy, but now the cramping and pain are back. Our desires are to be medicated, re-delivered, and to stop, so when we feel it coiling around us, we feel it must be real and we succumb to it and BAM just like that Satan has a foothold in us. But Galatians 5:1 is a gentle reminder to us how to sidestep that snake. It says, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” In other words, the whole time you feel that thing trying to wrap around you, remind yourself that it STILL DEAD!

Oh, I hope you are getting it. Yes, that thing is wrapping around you, yes you can feel it, it is there. Don’t buy the hype, don’t fall for the movement and activity, don’t get distracted and lose your way, don’t let that movement get you out of alignment with the Lord and His Word because just like that old snake...IT IS STILL DEAD!