The Other Woman

Allow me to mention the other woman, commonly known as the second wife though that is not an accurate description. She is sometimes called a concubine though I believe that title could be a precursor to what she eventually becomes. She can also be called a harlot though that is also too narrow for our purpose.

You might understand this better if you read my posts about intimidation

But allow me to say in short that the other woman is a woman who comes into a man’s life when the man is vulnerable and manages to breach his moral and spiritual defences to make that entry.

At other times she comes when the man is at a spiritual peak and has forgotten to cover his bases well. Remember Elijah after Carmel? Or Peter after his great confession? Or David when his conquests gave him the leisure of remaining at home as his army dealt with the small stuff?

What does 1 Corinthians 10:12 say?

I will start with Bible examples to get the ball rolling.

Who was Amalek and what was his relationship to Israel, a brother whichever way you looked at it?

What about Abimelech?

Remember Peninah?

What was the genesis of the Middle East crisis?

But that is not my focus today.

The other woman becomes legal by compromising the man. She gains prominence by killing a man’s spiritual sensitivity. She grows by killing a man’s sense of responsibility. She gains prominence by accessing his weakest point.

The other woman penetrates the man by making him break his vows in one way or the other. She worms her way through his heart by consciously but gently and slowly blinding him from his spiritual vision, eventually obliterating it. Then it becomes irrelevant whether he remembers it or not.

That is why you see a man pampering every whim of children that a woman had from other men even as his legal wife and children are starving. That is why you see a man taking those bastards to the best schools even as his children drop out of school.

Someone recently told me that her father never even once visited her in high school (he didn’t even pay her fees) yet always funded and visited his step daughter whose school was much farther than his own daughter’s school which was nearby.

I remember a neighbour I had to threaten to report to the police because his own daughter not only was the slave in the house, she was also the blunt of all the battery, even by her own father. Yet that woman had a daughter of the same age who did nothing and was treated as a princess by that man. And I knew that because anybody in the compound could hear the bumps and knocks the girl was getting. And it was a brick house and we were not even adjacent.

How a person can so quickly forget his own flesh and blood is unbelievable, only that it happens all so often.

That is why I want us to examine how it happens.

And I do it because it is one of the longest scheming tactics the devil has always used against God’s chosen servants.

Ever wondered how Solomon could overtake all his elder brothers to inherit David’s throne?

When David fell for the allure of Bathsheba and even went on to kill her husband, he completely fell prey to her machinations.

I have said elsewhere that plain reading of the Bible points (not says) to the very easy conclusion that the woman schemed to have David fall for her.

Otherwise explain to me how someone can bathe on a roof when a building with a higher roof is next to it. And that roof, due to the person inhabiting it, must always have someone walking on it, even if only for security purposes.

Yet that was the reality of her temptation.

But she was able to flip the narrative to make herself the victim. She was raped and her husband was killed by David before being forced to be his wife. And we know women are experts in such games.

David was from that point under her grip as his own way to deal with the guilt that narrative would create.

Even repentance could not cleanse that stain out of David’s heart.

That is why he was unable to deal with Amnon after he raped his sister. That is why he could not deal with Absalom after he killed Amnon. And that is why he was mourning for Absalom who died for overthrowing him.

His reasoning might have gone thus

What I did was much worse than what he has done. What right have I to implement the law that couldn’t have been implemented on me?

No wonder he wished that he had died instead of Absalom.

That infraction with Bathsheba had opened him to an unending guilt trip. A trip he could not abandon whatever he tried.

That is what Bathsheba knew and controlled.

Otherwise explain to me the logic behind David vowing to her that her son would be king after David yet he was probably beyond number ten on the queue?

Simply saying, the other woman wins by getting to identify the weakest spot in our spiritual makeup and working on it more like someone rubs the lamp to access a genie in Asian mythology.

She will breach our spiritual defences and from that point start controlling us from the inside.

This means that we will then be more or less under her spiritual machination due to that breach.

Another person who is very prominent in scripture is Jezebel who is even mentioned in Revelation.

We do not know how she breached Ahab’s defences but we know how total her control was over him. But even marrying her was in itself a spiritual breach.

What I want us to realise today is that the Bible calls her a harlot, at least at the time she was being killed.

How does a queen become a harlot, more so in the palace? How come the king could not do anything about it?

How could she kill a whole family to get the king a piece of land? Was she more powerful than the king?

But what I want us to realise is that she was not exactly powerful. Her power came from the men she could control, probably using sex as bait.

You may remember that she even tried to tempt Jehu before she was killed. Or do you not remember her dressing her best and painting herself lavishly before making her appearance? And I am sure he knew her wiles well enough.

I will not talk about Delilah because Samson was already compromised before she captured him though she was not much different.

Another thing I will say before forgetting is that the other woman is patient, patient enough until she gets the weakest point at which she will gain unfettered access and control.

She will bide her time because she knows that with that sustained ‘loyalty’ and ‘devotion’ she will finally get to break you. And I am talking about spiritually.

Many cultures have tales about their champions who were invincible due to a strength or a secret nobody, friend or foe, knew.

Then they loved a maiden from the enemy. Of course they didn’t know she was on assignment.

And this girl was able to worm her way into his life until she became the only person worth sharing the secret with.

And her assignment was completed and the enemy accomplished their mission.

It is similar to what is famously called the trojan horse.

I am talking about spiritual manhood here and why it is important for a man to shield himself from the other woman, however appealing or attractive she may be, whatever she may offer.

We must guard our relationship with God to avoid those snares, whatever shade they may take.

Though you might be able to repent or be forgiven for that sin, the breach it occasioned will be detrimental to the rest of your spiritual life.

And it is worst for the person with a spiritual assignment because the devil will place all his snares everywhere as a means of making us spoilt for choice in as far as temptations are concerned.

A simple dinner invitation could turn out to be more ensnaring than a visit to a whorehouse.

One time I had an electronics workshop.

One lady always came telling me that her TV had a problem and required that I go to her house to be able to understand it. And I insisted on her bringing it to the workshop.

She came to the workshop almost daily asking me to go to her house and I always refused.

I came to later learn from people in that centre that any man who went to her house became her prey.

I can say that she didn’t tempt me because she was a heathen. But you can see how innocent her ruse appeared.

How many pastors have fallen for the snares of rescuing that damsel in distress.

I was reading a book ‘The Naked Shepherd’ that talks about the pastoral call and what it entails.

I remember a story he shared about a young pastor being invited by a girl for prayer, only to find her naked in bed.

Serving God comes with many risks. And many of those risks are associated with our faithfulness.

It is therefore important that we keep ourselves safe from the ensnaring and entrapment the enemy is sure to be aiming at us in the course of our ministry and the maidens he will be using.

Otherwise, we may end up being washed out before our assignment is completed. Or at the very least have our arsenal weakened by that ‘small’ compromise.

Lack of compromise will allow us to pray without guilt even at our lowest.

And Elijah is an example. He prayed at his lowest and was able to get fresh bearings concerning the ministry God had remaining for him as well as clarify his assignment.

My prayer is for us to not only be wary of those easy and difficult temptations, but to respond to them as ruthlessly as Jehu did.

A damsel in distress does not tempt a man of God since she really is not in distress but is looking to bring me and what God has for me down. She is the daughter of Jezebel and deserves to be dealt with like Jehu did with her mother.

You do not battle with the evil one using kid gloves. You respond to him bare fisted because that is how he fights you.

I know some are thinking I am being plain cruel. But did these words not come to Peter from Jesus?

Get behind me Satan.

Should I be softer when I am not as strong or powerful or knowledgeable as my Lord?

Should I be lenient when Jesus called His opponents children of the devil and brood of vipers?

I am not advocating insults since I was not raised with them.

But firmness will at times come with a rebuke that appears like an insult and will be treated as one by the recipients.

And there are enough times that I have challenged falsehood and sin and accused of insulting.

I hope I have not lost the drift.

But the servant of God must be focused enough on their assignment and relationship with their Lord to clearly see and adequately respond to any attempt to sidetrack or even slow them down.

Otherwise, we will be just another specimen of men who were gently lured from their assignment. We will be trophies our enemy will display demonstrating his conquests.

And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and among the people. And they put his armour in the house of Ashtaroth: and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan. (1Samuel 31: 9, 10)

And the same happened with Samson.

Yet we never saw the enemy even hinting at something of the sort when they were tempting these characters. He had pampered their disobedience and rebellion until he had completely neutered them before displaying them.

I want us to think beyond that woman. But it is imperative to understand her wiles as we examine other avenues the enemy will use on us because a woman is probably the most portent weapon the evil one uses, and most frequently as well, as we see in the scriptures, from Adam in Genesis to prophetess Jezebel in Revelation.