¶ When our children were still young, we visited an aunt in the village. While there, our youngest son said he wanted to go. So, Mum set up his potty at the latrine. That was when the ‘green leaf’ made its way toward him.
When my wife went to clean him, she was horrified at the sight of the green snake beside our little boy! If I were the one, I would freeze on the spot and then try to attack the snake with some grammar and hefty vocab. Not my wife! Her mother instinct instantly subdued her fear. She ran and whipped the boy away from the snake! Women never cease to amaze me!
The little boy was a little surprised at his Mum’s Hollywood-like action movie. He said, “Mummy, I thought it was only a leaf!” That’s the problem with raising an African child in the city. Just because something is green doesn’t make it a leaf!
••• Fortunately, nothing happened. The green snake is said to be harmless but as a personal rule, I trust no snake. Everything in life has a way to approach it. The way you approach a green leaf is not the way you approach a snake, green or not!
Therein lies one of Satan’s deadliest weapons against the human soul! He disguises himself as an angel of light! Many people think Satan is a black or fiery red creature with horns and pointed tail, holding a pitchfork. Satan is definitely smarter than that! He knows that if he came to you like that you would run for your dear life into the waiting and loving arms of the Lord Jesus Christ!
••• On the contrary, Satan is the most suave, fashionable gentleman you ever met! He is so cultured that he opens car doors for ladies and offers a thirsty man a refreshingly cold glass of water! Satan is cute, respectable, intelligent, and ‘caring!’ He is a powerful advocate of political correctness and ‘human rights.’ He even organizes musical concerts to raise money for the poor! He has no problem distributing bags of rice to the hungry and poor, as long as he can keep them away from looking to the Cross. Most astounding of all, Satan preaches powerful sermons and works miracles in many churches every Sunday!
••• I suspect that by now someone reading this is convulsing. That certainly is not the picture of the Devil that you have been taught since you were an infant. Ninety-five or more percent of humanity hold the view of the Devil as an ugly, bad, wicked creature. Yes, he is, but he would never come at you as the enemy of your soul that he is. He comes to you as a friend. Because you approach an enemy with caution but you approach a friend with trust. Satan wants your trust, so he disguises as a perfect friend!
Satan comes dressed in choice forms – as an amiable politician, pastor, priest, a gifted music superstar celebrity who even occasionally sings gospel music, a school teacher, nurse, doctor, lecturer, a smashingly beautiful girl in bikini, a rich and generous boyfriend – anything but what you’d consider otherwise dangerous!
••• As a powerful pastor, Satan comes in what Christ described as ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing.’ Why? Because the way you approach a wolf-pastor is not the way you approach a sheep-pastor. The wolf pastors who dress as sheep are the deadliest spiritual invention of the Devil! They mass produce human souls for hell right from their pulpits and television shows.
Be wary of pastors whose words neither sting a sinner nor point the lost to the Cross of shame! Be
wary of ‘men of God’ who attempt to refurbish ‘the old rugged Cross.” The Cross is the Cross is the Cross. It is not beautiful; it is not palatable; it’s not suave; it is not popular; it is not likable; it is not comfortable. Period. You either carry it or forget Jesus. You can’t refurbish the Cross of Jesus Christ, Mr. Pastor! You can repackage its shame for the world, Mr. Bishop!
••• The preacher wolves in sheep’s clothing are so deadly and hard to detect that God equipped His people with a spiritual ability called discerning of spirits! But few Christians make use of this life-saving gift. If they did, they’d escape from the spiritual stranglehold of some of their suave, smooth-talking pastors and ‘fathers in the Lord!’ The 21st century Christian is so terribly lazy when it comes to studying the Bible for himself. As long as his ‘father in the Lord’ says so, why need he cross-check the written Word?
Anyway, let’s not get carried away by the devil. The fulcrum of this meditation is this: Everything in the universe has its own approach protocol – marriage, succeeding in business, parenting, academic success, financial freedom, making money … name it. Everything has a right and wrong approach. Many young men have lost the women they could have married because they approached her wrongly. Many men don’t have a clue that approaching a girl is a fine art, a class act! There’s something girls call “turn off.” You don’t ever want to experience it if you’re looking for a good wife!
If you unlock the right approach to a matter, you succeed. If you approach anything wrongly, you fail. You may even die. Your manner of approach can lock or unlock your destiny. The undoing of many youth is their wrong approach to the issues of life.
••• When someone comes to me for counseling, almost always, the offending issue is how he or she is approaching the matter at hand. For instance, I don’t see why a healthy unemployed graduate cannot throw away his worn out coat and tie and enter the farm and make millions. Lagos alone, I’m told, spends N1.5 trillion on food every year, out of which N300 billion goes to vegetables and pulses! Supply is so short that we import tomatoes from Ghana, and some vegetables from Cameroon! My wife bought two small beetroots the other day for N1,000! Can you imagine if you only cultivated beetroots? But you’d rather waste 7 irredeemable years of your life hoping and applying for bank jobs! What an approach to life!
••• A happy marriage also has its own approach. The moment you marry just for his money, or just for her body, you get a setup for a life of heartaches – like colonist Lugard’s 1914 Nigeria. For married people, there is a way to approach a husband, and a way to approach a wife. The Scripture gave us a ‘rule of thumb’ for a happy marriage: Husband love your wife; wife respect your husband! How simpler does it get?
••• Finally, there is a way to approach the presence of God. People think they could just casually and disrespectfully stroll into His presence. David said, “I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter His courts with praise.” Some of us stroll into God’s presence, singing anointed Don Moen or Sinach worship songs with defiled hands and unrepentant hearts. I met this young man, whom I discovered was cohabiting with a girl. Imagine my surprise when on Sunday morning, both of them rose up early, dressed up religiously and scampered for early morning mass! I hope they will succeed in deceiving God.
God is our heavenly Father, sure. But He is a holy God. What separates the God of the Bible from all other gods is His Holiness. We approach Him, first, on the merits of Jesus Christ alone; not our own righteousness. We approach Him with boldness, not beggarly. We approach Him with awe and reverence. We approach Him with faith – for without faith, it is impossible to please Him. Sometimes, we approach Him in perfect silence. “The LORD is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before Him!”
••• Before you do anything this week, ask first, “What is the best approach to what I am about to do?” If you are doing anything presently – you’re in a premarital sexual relationship, lazying on your job, maltreating your spouse, living a lie – consider that your approach can build or destroy your destiny. Is Christ really the LORD of your life or are you a mere church-goer?
I love you.
Be healthy, wealthy and wise!
Yep. The devil came in the form of that beautiful lady trying to upset me.
Beautiful. thanks a bunch!
Nice.