Satan, temptation, and Pin fish

On our recent Fall Break trip to Florida, one of the things the boys and I like doing the most is going fishing down at one of the piers. We go to this place where all of the deep sea boats are docked for the night. In large trash cans are the remains of the fish they caught that day and we will take one of the carcasses out and use pieces of it for bait. Some nights it seems like every cast we are catching either a salt water catfish, white grunt, or small pinfish. Typically there are some cranes that hang out on the pier with us. Occasionally we will toss them one of these pinfish and they, as quick as lightning, peck the fish with their beak to kill it and then quickly swallow it. This year the cranes were pretty aggressive in coming up to us trying to get us to give them a fish.

So I’m sitting at my desk today thinking about this Sunday’s message and a particular verse caused my mind to drift back to our pier fishing. Peter says in 1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”. Peter reminds us as Christians we have to keep our “guard” up because there’s an enemy seeking to “devour” us. The open door he’s looking for is our giving in to temptation and sin. Most of our sin is not done alone; there’s someone else who’s either complicit in the sin or a victim of the sin, but sin typically is not a one person thing.

Here’s the point I’m making here. Those pin fish are partially to blame for their own demise. Had they not given in to the temptation of the bait we used they never would have ended up on the pier, a place where they were not created to be, and thus we never would have had opportunity to give them to the cranes to devour. In order for Satan to “devour” us I believe we first let our guard down. Typically this involves a temptation to sin that we give in to, often involving other people (s). Then the next thing we know we are far from the will of God for our life, in a place He never intended us to be, and we are easily devoured by Satan. So what’s the key to not being devoured? Peter answers that in the first part of 1 Peter 5:8 when he says, “Be sober (alert) and be vigilant”. As a child of God the devil has you in his crosshairs and would love nothing more than to take you down. So no matter how alluring the temptation seems today, don’t give in.