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PROGRAM D-7564
Have you ever picked up a rattlesnake? You’re probably thinking: “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t pick up a rattlesnake.” No, but you might do something worse: Let yourself be deceived by temptation and get bitten before you know it.
The second mistake our friend in the fairy tale made was to listen to the lies of the snake. His lies sounded reasonable to her. He even used God in there somewhere to deceive her into thinking he was harmless. One thing we know for sure is that Satan our enemy is a masterful liar. He knows how to deceive us with his enticing words.
If she had never stopped to talk to him, she would never have been deceived by his lies. But once she listened, she had difficulty discerning the truth and she couldn’t think very clearly.
Remember, when you walk into the enemy’s territory, you are inviting deception, because Satan is the father of lies and he’s very good at it. He mixes the lies with enough truth to stump you. The dear woman who found herself in an affair she never intended to be in was still struggling with the lies that had deceived her. After all, he really was a nice man, and though she knew it was wrong, she kept trying to rationalize it away because it had made her feel good to be treated so kindly.
Oh, do we ever get ourselves into predicaments when we start listening to our feelings. Remember, just because it feels good doesn’t mean it’s right! Your feelings can lead you so far off the right path, you wouldn’t believe it! If that’s the kind of rationalizing you’ve been doing, you’re picking up a rattlesnake.
After she made the mistake of talking to the rattlesnake instead of running away, and then being deceived by its lies, her next mistake was to ignore the laws and principles which are always true about rattlesnakes. When you put a rattlesnake under your coat, when you play in their territory, when you put yourself in places where you know rattlesnakes live, you’re going to get bitten because that’s the nature of rattlesnakes, and it won’t change even for you.
So, you think you’d never pick up a rattlesnake? You may have one under your coat right now, just waiting for the right time to bite you.