The parable of the mosquito.

One  night I woke up with a raised white bump on my left shoulder that itched like crazy. While half asleep I started scratching till the itch turned into a burning sensation. The  following morning I saw the red skinless patch on my shoulder and realized that I had been attacked by a little flying demon called  ‘the mosquito’.  Without even noticing it, the little sucker had landed on my exposed shoulder, stuck its  needle nose into my skin and injected me with its saliva and drew from my blood.  Even though the bite hadn’t  been much bigger than a  needle pin, once I had finished scratching it, the tiny wound had turned into a bleeding and stinging coin sized mark.   After a few days the affected area became infected and it  took quite a while  to heal.  If that wasn’t bad enough,  it also left a permanent dark mark on my shoulder, reminding me of my  encounter with this little devilish insect.

Jesus  told  simple stories called  parables. Stories people could relate to and illustrated a moral or spiritual lesson.  I am sure many people agree with me that  mosquitoes are a pain in the butt,  however the lesson I learned is that we are our own worst enemy.   Just as a mosquito injects us, in the same way  the devil injects our minds with lies, mostly during dark times when we are vulnerable and down. Lies are a deathly poison, especially the lies distorting the character and nature of God and who we are in Christ.  Once the lie has been planted in our mind and we start believing it,  it’s just a matter of time before it starts to impact our behavior.  Although the enemy plants the lie, he cannot make us believe  nor act upon it, he just leaves that up to us.  It would not surprise me , once the devil has planted a lie,  he sits  back in his Lazee-Boy sipping a whiskey and enjoy watching us destroy ourselves and others.  Please don’t get me wrong –  the chair and the drink are not the problem here – the point  I am trying to make is this,  its easy to blame the devil for the damage we do to ourselves, others and our God-given dreams.  He is the instigator but we become the implementors.

One of the lies I believed, was that God rolls his eyes, deeply sighs and throws his hands up in the air every time I miss the mark.  So you can imagine what that did to my self-esteem, it hampered my spiritual and emotional  growth. I started to procrastinate from pursuing and implementing my  God-given dreams.  Today I know better,  my Father in heaven is my biggest supporter. He champions me on through His Word, His Holy Spirit and His people.  I now believe that failures are only failures when we fall and don’t get up. The awesome thing is that we don’t have to get up in our own strength, we get up after being infused through Gods Spirit by His resurrecting power.

We can’t always prevent the enemy from injecting us  with lies but we can refuse to believe them and let them shape us and our lives.  So I decided that before I have another encounter, to  stock up my first aid kit with insect repellent and antihistamine.  Besides that I have asked the ‘Good Pharmacist’ to give me a repeat prescription for Truth.  I want to encourage you to do the same and just to let you know – Gods pharmacy  is open twenty four seven.