Stay alert!

In the last few weeks, I have had a bit of a battle going on in my home.  It has caused internet research, the trying out of different strategies and rearranging of the household in various ways.  What have I been battling with?  I’m not even sure what they are called.  They are those little, tiny, jumpy flies that hang around decaying things. 

Initially, I thought they came in with the geranium.  It was not flourishing so I brought it in to live on my kitchen window, which it loved.  The flies appeared around the same time which may have been coincidence.  I found the geranium another space, outside my front door.  But the flies remained.  Next, I evicted the food waste bin, and the recycling bin.  I deep cleaned everything.  I covered the fruit bowl.  I tried fly papers, fly spray, you name it.  The flies persisted.  It seemed that they invaded every space and every time I sat down to read my bible or pray, they were there climbing up the windows and just being irritating!

The reality is, it’s not even that there are hundreds of them.  We are talking no more than about 10 a day.  They cause me absolutely no harm whatsoever.  I don’t like them, but they are completely harmless. The latest strategy is the good old fashioned fly swat which is quick and effective.  More than that, I am learning to ignore them when I need to focus. 

Like so much of my life, God has used the issue to talk to me.  Is it just me or does anyone else feel like everything is prophetic, significant, in the sense that God speaks through it?  Everything is a sign of something God is doing or saying – so it seems.  As an aside, maybe that’s why Romans 8:28 says:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

ALL things, even little jumpy flies!

I was annoyed by how much time I had expended on these stupid little flies, about how I had allowed them to get under my skin and irritate me.  They had stolen so much of my emotional energy, in a ridiculous way.  Part of me could laugh about it, joking with friends but part of me was shocked at how I had allowed such a little issue to get to me. One day,  I was reading Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable ~ if anything is excellent or praiseworthy ~ think about such things.

The word ‘whatever’ jumped out at me.  I know it is not the context of the verse, but it reminded me of how the word has been used in recent years as an expletive that indicates indifference.  ‘Whatever’ has become a euphemism for something skin to ‘I don’t care’.  For me, this unlocked a strategy for those moments when it felt like the ‘lord of the flies’ (the literal meaning of Satan’s name Beelzebub) was trying to distract me.  ‘Whatever’ became my mental response to what the enemy would like to do through the issue of the flies – to distract, to irritate, to undermine peace.  As this has become a mental response that allows me to decide to respond or not, rather than automatically reacting, my ‘whatever’ to the enemy redirects me to this verse in Philippians, which is ultimately a refocussing on Jesus because he is all those things, thus it automatically leads to peace.

The enemy would like me to think he is big and scary and holds all the cards, but he is as powerless to impact my life as those flies … unless I let him.  So often I believe his lies and I allow him to set the agenda for the day, but God has not left me powerless.  Luke 10:19 reminds me that Jesus said:

Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.

The source of that power and authority is Jesus.  He is everything that is true, pure, noble, right, and lovely.  The more I focus on him; the more I sit with him and become saturated with his glorious presence; the more aware I am of where I am seated, of just who is in me:

Christ in you, the hope of glory

… according to Colossians 1:27, then the more Satan loses his false power over me.  However, if the enemy can distract me from my source, he will.  I feel that right now, that is the biggest battle; to keep my mind focussed, to push past the myriad of ridiculous little distractions that occur every single time I decide to set my attention on Jesus.  The current list of possibilities to distract me includes the phone, in pole position on the list – technology has the ability to suck me into a time warp where I emerge several hours later wondering what happened. 

I am reminded of a verse I keep coming back at the moment, in Song of Songs 2:15

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.

The enemy is not always blatantly obvious.  It can be quite subtle.  Like the photo, the foxes can look quite cute.  I pick up the phone to check a scripture, look up the meaning of something, to search on Bible Hub and instantly there is something to distract – less so much a notification or a phone call (often easier to ignore), more a seemingly spiritual temptation, a new worship song, a preach, or a word to take me off track, to tempt me into the maze and then I’m gone.  The original reason for picking up the phone is long forgotten, and my time is eaten away. 

The context of the verse is intimacy with Jesus.  The foxes, like the flies are small but the distractions, however insignificant and harmless they seem, have the capacity to ruin my ‘vineyard’, that place of fruitfulness with Jesus that I am invited into.  Much of what God has been talking to me about this year has been words like, ‘focus’, ‘fix your gaze’, ‘set your mind’ and so on.  There is a real sense of determination needed, taking authority over my own vineyard.  My spiritual warfare has to start ‘at home’ and I need to heed the exhortation in 1 Peter 5:8, in the NLT version here:

Stay alert!  Watch out for your great enemy, the devil.  He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 

In my youthful moments of my first love, nothing in the world could have distracted my gaze from the love of my life.  That’s where I want to be with Jesus.  So, like the current strategy with the flies, I need to take a very proactive attitude to swatting the distractions.  Like the flies, I need to take no prisoners and in order to swat them, I have to be alert to their presence. 

To ‘swat’ is to strike or hit sharply.  A ‘swat’ is a sharp or violent blow.  I think this is exactly what I need to be doing with the little foxes that seek to rob my time, my intimacy with Jesus, the things that keep me from my source of life. 

There is a certain satisfaction in swatting the flies.  I am not, in case you wondered, keeping count but I know the count is definitely in my favour.  The ‘odds’ are stacked in our favour against the devil too because we are supernaturally empowered.  I don’t have to be scared of him but equally, as Paul reminds me in a different context in 2 Corinthians 2:11

We are not unaware of his schemes

So, you might want to join me.  Let’s not be taken in by his temptation to lesser things.  Let’s not be lulled into a false sense of security.  Let’s stay alert.  Let’s go to war with distraction, no matter how ‘cute’ it looks.