There is a trap that is very close to every living person on the earth today, that is so unruly and can never be tamed easily. A trap that you can easily see at all times everywhere you go, yet people keep falling into it.
It’s right under your nose. You live with it every moment of your life. You can’t do without it every day. You wake up daily with it and you go to sleep with it.
How you are handling this little trap is very crucial to your success in life. When handled in the way that God designed it to function, it prospers and promotes you in life. It opens doors of opportunities into your life.
And it can also shut down the doors of opportunities on you, if misused. Your mouth can be your greatest friend, just as much as it can be your biggest enemy.
You might have seen how easily any serious and diligent Christian can fail and disappoint, because of the mouth. It has ruined many lives, destinies and the dreams of many people around the world.
Kings and Queens had seen their kingdoms destroyed, because they mishandled their tongues. Its mishandling has resulted in wars among nations, tribes and peoples everywhere on the earth.
Yes, the mouth can be a destroyer of lives, especially if you’re not being watchful to discipline yourself in using it. And it can also build your life up if you are trained to handle it correctly.
You can stop it now.
As King Solomon once said:
“You are snared by the words of your mouth; You are taken by the words of your mouth.”
Proverbs 6:2 NKJV
To be snared here means to be seduced or lured away into doing something, that one would not have normally done.
Have you ever found yourself saying something that you never intended to say before? Yet you had found yourself saying those very words over and over again.
Even though you had tried to prevent yourself from saying them. But out of nowhere you still find yourself saying the same things over and over again.
It’s quite possible that you have gotten yourself snared, without even knowing that the devil had been playing his tricks on you; by putting words into your mouth.
It’s a snare trap that you keep seeing yourself falling into. But as a child of God, you can turn it around for your own good. You can begin to train yourself, never to fall into this trap of the enemy again.
In fact, God gave you a tongue because He wants to be speaking through it, but the devil has devised a means to steal that weapon of God from many people.
Satan is a master trickster. He tried to do the same thing with Jesus, during the temptation in the wilderness. And if he had tried it on Jesus, he definitely would try it on you also.
But you can train yourself to deal with him and his tricks. You will need to train yourself first to detect his snares from afar.
You will also need to learn how to be applying the blood of Jesus, as a covering over every weakness in your life. By using the blood of Jesus as your covering, you are setting a boundary against the devil, that he cannot cross over to ensnare you.
Three times the devil subtly and gently tried to tempt Jesus into sinning against God. And on all the three occasions he failed.
If you had studied the tactics that were used by him in tempting Jesus, you will notice that each temptation of the devil came to Jesus, with a different form of intensity and pressure on Him. The height of it all came during the third temptation, when Jesus finally decided to draw the red line against the devil.
And just as Jesus drew the red line against the devil, you will have to draw the red line against him also.
The Bible described what the devil did to Jesus:
“Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.””
Matthew 4:8-9 NKJV
This same tactic is still being used by the devil today also, to snare many Christians away from the purpose of God over their lives.
He is using the lust in them for the pleasures of this world to tempt them, away from the love of God in Christ Jesus. He is using the good things of life, to divert their attention away from following Jesus.
The ultimate goal of the devil in tempting you is to make you, to serve and worship him with your mouth. He does not want you to yield your mouth voluntarily to worship God.
And if Jesus could be tempted in the flesh by the devil, he will do the same thing to you. You will be tempted also for as long as you are living on this earth.
No one is ever exempted from his temptations. But how you are responding to the tricks of the devil, is very crucial to your ability to escape his snares.
It does not matter even if you think that you’re a strong Christian. No person on this earth is ever beyond being tempted by the devil.
But just as Jesus overcame temptation, you can train yourself to always draw a blood line against the devil. That’s a line that he can never cross.
The devil is seeking access to your heart.
Paul in his letter to the Galatians once had to wake them up from their spiritual slumber about this, when he wrote to them:
“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?”
Galatians 3:1 NKJV
This group of believers in Jesus Christ had fallen into the trap of the enemy. They had not trained themselves to break the devil’s snare.
Paul had taught them many things before in preventing the situation of this nature; but the enemy had sneaked in unnoticed into their midst. He had caused them to forget what they had been taught by the Apostle Paul.
They had God’s word entrenched in their hearts, but the enemy had bewitched them with the corrupt practices from the world around them. They had been pushed away from following the teachings of Paul.
But today as a child of God you can always break the snare of the devil, by exercising your authority in the name of Jesus.
As a Christian you have to make up your mind, to be judging and weighing your words carefully before speaking with your mouth.
Every word of your mouth carries spiritual strength and weight, in enforcing whatever you are saying. Be very careful about what is coming out of your mouth. Learn to choose your words carefully before speaking.
Not only is the devil listening to your words, but the angels of the Lord are also listening to every word that you are speaking in accordance with God’s written word to perform it.
As the Bible says:
“So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
James 1:19-20 NKJV
If you’re careful with your words, you will be slow to speak. The devil knows how to put pressure on you whenever you are angry, so as to make you to start saying what you don’t want to say.
It’s not necessarily sinful to be angry. But it can become a problem when you can’t get over it. Be quick to always put your anger away.
In fact, the Bible says about anger:
“Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath,”
Ephesians 4:26 NKJV
Don’t get angry in the morning time, and then you find yourself struggling to go to sleep at night because of it.
Get yourself out of that dangerous corner, where your faith can never work. Words that are being spoken in anger can be dangerous and poisonous to your future.
Don’t hold on to the anger for long. Be quick to speak words of forgiveness to those who are making you angry and move on with your life.
You don’t need to be saying words with your mouth, that can easily open the gateway into your life for the devil.
Be very careful with what you are saying with your mouth. Your words can give you a glorious future. And they can also ruin your future for you.
A good Christian may start doing what he or she won’t normally be doing, because the enemy has targeted such a Christian for attack, by manipulating him to be saying what he is not supposed to be saying.
Satan can never succeed in getting you, except he is able to make you to say, what you are not supposed to be saying. He knows how to put words in your mouth which you never want to say, so as to ensnare you. He will test your heart with those words first, just because he wants to see how you will react to it.
And if you’re smart enough to break the snare, he will leave you for a while. He will never leave permanently, but he will keep an eye on you from a distance for another opening to tempt you again.
Just because you have broken the devil’s snare once, does not necessarily mean that he would not try something new against you. Do you remember what happened after the temptation of Jesus?
The Bible says:
“That completed the testing. The Devil retreated temporarily, lying in wait for another opportunity.”
Luke 4:13 MSG
The devil will retreat after you had broken his snare with your spoken and targeted words at him. But he will leave you alone for the moment, only to return whenever he sees a new opportunity to attack you again.
The only time you will never have to worry about the devil again, will come after he will eventually be thrown into the lake of fire (see Revelation 20:1-3).
It’s interesting for to note here that Paul had asked the Galatians in chapter 3:1 above:
“Who had casted a spell of witchcraft on you?”
This type of rhetorical question by Paul was meant, to awaken the spiritual understanding of these believers in Christ, into discerning what the devil was doing against their faith. It was meant to bring the gospel truth into the life, that was being distorted by the devil.
The devil is seeking to gain access into the lives of many people today. He can never get access into your life as a Christian, but he has the ability to influence your mind to start thinking negatively, about the things of God.
He will use people around you to start putting doubts and unbelief into your mouth. His aim is to gently push you to start saying, what you don’t really believe in concerning God.
The unsaved world and the multitude that often goes to Church is full of people like that. Watch the company that you are keeping in the house of God. Are they building up your faith? Or are they causing you to walk and act like the unsaved people of the world?
The access into your heart is through your mouth. The devil knows it. As the scriptures says:
“ .. The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
Romans 10:8-10 NKJV
This is a spiritual truth that is acknowledged by heaven, and the kingdom of darkness as well. The gateway to your heart is through the mouth.
You can only counteract the words of the devil by declaring, what God’s word says about you.
Start declaring the word of God over your life about your healing and good health. You can deny the devil access into your life by training yourself to do this regularly.
Start seeing yourself as God sees you.
The mixed multitude of today can push you away from following the footsteps of Jesus. You have to be careful with them. Each one of them has an agenda that is not necessarily of God.
In fact, the Apostle Paul warned us about them in his letter to the Philippians, when he wrote:
“For many walks, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame— who set their mind on earthly things.”
Philippians 3:18-19 NKJV
The “many” people who are being referred to here are in the multitude around you. The attitude of the multitude that often pays lip service to Christ, without the heart devotion to His teachings was summed up by the Apostle Paul in these scriptural texts.
The Christians referred to here were bound for heaven, just like every other Christian of the Church at Philippi.
But there was something wrong with them, that caused Paul to start weeping for them. They had become worldly in their attitude towards the things of God. They had moved away from a heart devotion to Christ, to start following their own personal feelings and desires.
Feelings and desires that were from the world around them had hindered them, from embracing all that Christ died for on the cross for on their behalf.
They had been snared by their own mouths. They had fallen into the trap of the enemy, who had used the words from the people around them to get them ensnared.
That’s how they had ended up as being the enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ. When a Christian loves the things of this world so much, to the extent that he finds it difficult to embrace the cross of Jesus Christ, then there are troubles ahead in life for such a Christian.
These Christians at Philippi loved God, but the problem with them was that they could not “press on towards their upward call in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-16).
The salvation experience was all that they had. They could not go beyond that because, their tongue was glued to their pasts. They continued to cling on to their sinful pasts after getting saved, even as they were paying lip service to following Christ Jesus.
The real problem with such believers in Christ Jesus today, is that they can’t embrace the cross of Christ.
If you can’t embrace the cross where Jesus Christ was crucified for you, then you can never let go of your past sins.
You may shout and scream the name of Jesus, but you are still struggling with the sins from your past. You may plead the power of His blood, but if you’re not going to surrender your past right now to Jesus at the feet of His cross, then your Christian experience of salvation cannot really become authentic.
You may eventually make it to heaven, but as Paul said above you have indeed made your stomach your ultimate god on this earth. Your personal desires in this life have become your god.
Christianity has become something of your own personal opinion, and not about what Christ really teaches in the scriptures.
This is the way of the multitude in our world today. They love self-glorification rather than Christ glorification.
They love to seek after the benefits of being in Covenant with God, while relegating and denying the knowledge of God Himself.
They are not interested in seeking to know more about Christ, apart from the knowledge of the benefits that had been provided for us in Him.
That’s why you will always see them taking glory in the very things, that brings them shame on this earth even at the feet of Jesus.
They love the freedom that Christ gives. But real freedom in Christ Jesus will always embrace His cross.
Real freedom in Christ Jesus will cause you to serve others, rather than being self-centered.
Just because you go to Church regularly does not make you God’s servant. You must be willing to make yourself available to God for service to others at any time.
Christian service to others includes giving them the opportunity to live the life that Christ gave to you.
True liberty in Christ Jesus will cause you to start keeping a guard over your mouth, so that you can become who God had created you to be.
Don’t let the enemy hinder your faith. Watch what is coming out of your mouth at all times. Let it be only faith filled words that will replenish the earth with God’s glory.
