A dangerous trap Christians need to avoid …

Of all of the many negative things you could imagine possibly experiencing in life, being trapped would be a horror anyone would want to avoid.

Floyd Collins is one person who discovered the danger of being trapped in the worst way possible:

On a February day in 1925, Floyd Collins climbed into Sand Cave in search of fortune. Suddenly, his lantern failed. Crawling through the darkness, Collin’s foot hit a seven-ton boulder. It fell on his leg, trapping him in the coffin-like narrowness of a dark, subterranean straitjacket. For days Collins was trapped 125 feet below ground in an ice-cold space eight inches high and 12 feet long. In the meantime, his plight became a national sensation. As the rescue attempt wore on, some 50,000 tourists bought hot dogs, balloons, and soft drinks from vendors at the cave in Kentucky. But in the end, Floyd Collins died alone in the icy darkness, crying out deliriously, “Get me out. Why don’t you take me out? Kiss me goodbye, I’m going.”

The use of a trap is one of the dangerous tools Satan employs to capture and destroy people. In fact, the evil one even tried to trap Jesus:

“From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. ‘Heaven forbid, Lord,’ he said. ‘This will never happen to you!’ Jesus turned to Peter and said, ‘Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s,’” Matthew 16:21-23.

Peter likely thought he was being caring and encouraging to Jesus, but because his human view conflicted with God’s plan, it actually was a trap intended by Satan to divert Jesus off His mission of rescuing humanity from sin.

What was the trap the enemy used? One of Jesus’ closest friends trying to influence Him with a point of view that conflicted with God’s will.

Satan still employs that same trap today in attempting to snare souls away from God’s Word and God’s will. By bringing alongside us someone we love and trust to encourage us from limited human perspective that does not calibrate with the will and word of God, we can be trapped into moving off our mission of following in the footsteps of Jesus as faithful and obedient disciples.

Traps are even a greater danger to the professing Christian who lacks knowledge of God’s word and His will; the more ignorant we are of either of those, the greater possibility of stepping into a trap.

What can you do, then, to guard against traps?

1. Be constant in the Word, growing in knowledge and understanding of God’s Word and will so that when you hear a contradictory message you’ll be able to identify it as a trap.

2. Develop an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit so that you can be well-tuned to His guidance. The Holy Spirit will guide you in the way of truth, but if you’re stifling your relationship with Him, you can miss His warnings.

3. Be careful who you listen to and who you allow to influence you. Even people who are supposed to love and care about you can be used as a trap if they they can influence you from a human view point rather than from God’s.

One other point: Don’t allow yourself to be used as bait in Satan’s traps for others. Make sure whatever influence you have in the life of other people fully syncs with the Word and will of God and that you’re not urging your own human view points on anyone else.

Scotty