Why Serpents?

 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

I have harboured this message for a long time and feel that time has come to share it.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus would advise His servants to be like snakes, of all animals? Why not a lion or a deer? Why not even like a bear that hibernates or a chameleon that camouflages?

These are some lessons God is giving me as He takes His school (of this servant) to the farm, if you must understand. This is one reason He directed me to a farm and is slowly turning me into a farmer, however mini it may be.

Do you know that the snake is probably the most defenceless animal in the whole world?

Yet it is the most dreaded, by most people.

Allow me to explain.

A snake has only its mouth as its weapon, a majority of which are completely harmless (except in Australia where most are venomous).

A snake cannot see or hear.

A snake’s eyes are movement sensors of sorts and they do not have ears.

Their belly and tongue are their only active connections to the outside world (there are a few who also possess heat sensors on their heads).

Due to its physiology, a snake can ‘run’ fast only for brief moments. This means that it is unable to flee danger as far as it would need to. That is why for snake hunters only the sight of one is enough to capture it. It cannot spit or bite many times as the release of venom is limited to a single effective time. This means that after delivering that venom it is unable to effectively flee the scene since the delivery completely exhausts it.

A wounded snake is unable to heal because there is nothing it can do to that wound, meaning that flies and other insects can comfortably start laying their eggs on that open wound even as infections thrive therein.

What does this mean.

It means that a snake MUST learn to be as invisible as possible. It has to keep its distance and make sure that no other animal can even suspect of its whereabouts.

 A friend recently told me that you can live in the same house with a snake for a years if you have a predictable pattern. It is then able to plan its activities accordingly so that it can hide before you come.

You will only see it when you change that pattern as you will probably find it looking for food or basking.

One time we had rats in the house that resisted everything we tried; from poison to traps.

Then they started reducing, eventually disappearing.

It was then that my daughter found a snake, a big one, as she was rearranging the furniture. And they killed it. Then we realised that it was the one that had decimated the rats.

Incidentally, we would hear some strange sounds at night and conclude it was the rats rummaging.

By the way we are talking about months.

What am I saying?

A snake has many enemies for the simple reason that it is a snake.

Birds will start screaming when they see a snake. I for one will kill a snake before finding out whether it is venomous or not. And I know many people are like that.

It is a known fact that snakes are very useful in the control of pests like rodents. Yet no farmer will hesitate to kill a snake when he finds it on his farm.

That guides the reason Jesus used the snake as our example as believers.

Do you realise that in the scriptures we have only one offensive weapon? Do you know what it is?

It is the word of God. And that is the teeth we have to defend ourselves from our enemies.

Knowing the word and how to use it therefore makes it possible for us to live.

That is the only way we can also respond to a hostile world seeking to swallow us.

You see, even snakes without venom behave as if they have by pretending to lunge at enemies so that they think they have and leave them alone. Others have tails looking like heads to confuse an enemy so that should they be struck, the least useful part is hit. Others will move with that tail raised for the same purpose.

I recently saw one such. It looked as if it was crawling in reverse until I looked closely and saw the ‘tail’ flickering and realised its ruse.

Believers have enemies; more enemies than they even imagine.

It therefore befits us to know that fact even as we navigate this enemy infested world.

It is also important for us to realise that we, like serpents, only have one weapon at our disposal to deal with all these enemies. And that is the word of God.

Another truth with a snake is that it does not just move. It has to have its environment safe before it moves. That is how it was able to live in our house for months without anybody noticing until the environment was changed.

Many times believers rush into situations without knowing the dangers they are exposing themselves to.

Ministers have become drunkards because they had decided to share the Gospel in bars without God’s express order. Some have become whoremongers because they had decided to reach out to harlots, again without their teeth being polished. Still others have become moral sewers because they thought that corruption simply required their presence and conversation to stop.

They did not go to their Lord to get His orders before launching out into the deep that is confronting the world against God.

Others have gotten lost because they thought that information is all they need to change the world without realising that there is a context for that information.

I remember a time I took a team to visit Hindu temples to interact with and understand Hinduism.

After the visits we were so exhausted that were it not for God’s restoration we could have simply cancelled the whole week’s program. Some people literally became sick and withdrew from it.

That is how marriage counsellors become casualties of the things they guide people against. That is how moralists become as immoral as those whose vices they expose. That is how apologists become the things they are fighting to get others out of.

A snake not only knows its environment. It also knows its limitations.

You must get near a snake for it to bite or even spit at you. It must get near enough to be able to eat. And it must do the same with stealth. Otherwise, it will never be able to catch anything.

Yet look at the bravado ministers employ to announce their move into another territory! Look at all those announcements and advertisements announcing to the devil that his territory will soon be overtaken by these brazen ministers!

And we wonder why evangelistic meetings are disrupted. We wonder why ministers are framed to destroy their credibility. We wonder why equipment fail.

A snake will never bite remotely. Yet we think that we can.

A snake never advertises its presence. In fact you will never see a snake showing off unless it is its mating season for some, and even then it is in a safe place away from enemies. It will also only boast to the snakes it is interested in.

Are believers like that?

I have gone to places and the minister wonders why nobody notices that a bishop or pastor is in the house, insisting that he be treated special. I have been in meetings where I felt some shame as a minister when I saw the ‘noise’ some ministers were making for not being seen.

And we wonder why such ministers rarely amount to much, if anything, in the spiritual realm.

You see, a snake announcing its presence is signing its own death sentence.

It is not much different in the spiritual realm.

And this also applies in the social media and internet realm.

Unless God expressly orders you, do not apply advertorial gimmicks on God and His methods. Do not publicise your achievements in the spirit. And do not seek to be seen to be ministering.

That will be like the snake exposing its whole body for viewing by everybody, including enemies.

To a snake, a display of any sort is an exposure to destruction. That is why you will never see snakes in places where their bodies are easily seen. The bigger the snake, the bigger the cover under which it must operate.

A snake never moves for the fun of it. It is either looking for food or shelter or a place to bask since as we know it is coldblooded. There are no gyms for snakes even when they are in captivity. They never compete like other animals are made to.

You must make a snake pit open if people have to see them even in snake parks. You have a burrow and all of them will choose it over anywhere else because to a snake, security is only in obscurity.

That is how God wants us to live. He does not want us pursuing publicity, especially the publicity of the ministry He has prescribed for us.

We must allow Him to decide when and where He may want us to be exposed as then He will have the required security for us when that exposure draws enemies as snake farms have.

We are supposed to limit our interactions with the world limited to very few senses as opposed to exposing our spirits to the whole panorama of the world since like the snake our lives are continuously at risk from the same world.

Pornography is not the entry point but advanced stage in our entrapment. Very few believers will choose to delve in it just like that.

They are slowly drawn into its grasp through interactions with other mediums

From TV to movies to internet movies to pornography, through many other enticing and simply irresistible traps.

Nobody feels safe in pornography just like nobody feels safe in drugs. Nobody will thus choose the same for the fun of it.

As such, nobody will dangle them into your eyes to experiment with.

But they can easily and stealthily allow you to sip and sample the same in small bits until you then become entrapped.

I have seen how many young people got trapped into smoking

They were given cigarettes free for years. Then the media was screamingly loud about the vice that it appeared ‘cool’ to smoke. Movies also had all the cool guys smoking.

Until someone got addicted.

They would then spend their last coin buying that smoke. They would rather buy that stick than food.

And I have seen the same with alcohol.

Incidentally, the entrapped will not be restricted to those addictions as they will have borne children.

To satisfy that addiction will require a lot of ‘creativity’ as they will not satisfy on their own.

This person who can forgo food for a smoke must somehow eat and so must have some way of getting food, especially since addictions are costlier than food. This means that the consumer of those addictions must be able to produce at least three times what a person without addictions produces to be at par with them.

That is why God needs His people to be wise enough to avoid them before they are dangled as temptations just like a snake will not attempt to swallow anything that won’t fit their expandable throat. It will not therefore attempt looking for prey beyond their capacity.

But we preach about ambition differently.

Dream big and other gimmicks train the saints (are they truly so?) to aim at things outside God’s revelations just because they are seeing others swallowing them.

Living within one’s means is treated as lack of faith when God has not expressly said so. Greed is therefore painted as a positive trait just because it is spiritualised.

Just like a snake, we should know our limits and only stretch within those limits.

I hope to develop this soeme more as God continues releasing His revelation.