Monday, May 30, 2016

A Roaring Lion - By Anna

Hi, everyone! This is Anna. I'm taking over for Jessica this week. Soon we'll work out a regular rotation and stick to it, even though right now it's a little haphazard.

I haven't even thought about this post until today, but what I'm going to do is going to be pretty short. I just wanted to share a short Bible verse and then take some stuff from John MacArthur's commentary on that verse. The verse centers around this picture I took at the San Diego Safari Park on Monday:

"...Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."
1 Peter 5:3

"Personally and through his surrogates the demons, who like him never sleep nor rest, Satan untiringly, like a predator in the night of his own evil darkness, hunts to kill. He prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Peter's imagery of the roaring lion derives from the Old Testament (Psalm 7:2; 17:12; 58:6; Ezekiel 22:25) and pictures the viciousness of this hunter pursuing his prey. Devour has the sense of "to gulp down," emphasizing the final objective, not to wound but to destroy. Peter would not have had, as most believers today do, the experience of seeing lions in a zoo. But he might have seen the gory spectacle of lions slaughtering victims for the entertainment of the Romans. Certainly he knew of such events."

"Peter's first line of defense for protection from Satan's strategies is simple and direct - be on the alert. If Satan so easily deceived Even in Eden's perfect environment, how much more are redeemed sinners living in a sinful, fallen world susceptible to Satan's craftiness and deception...They [Christians] will be victorious if they are spiritually alert for satanic influence coming through their surroundings and relationships, and assess potential temptations and flee from them."

So that's it for today!! Thanks for reading, and be sure to come back next week for our next post.

~Anna

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