Nothings worse than standing on one foot trying to balance yourself all the while you’re trying to get out of the pickle your in. Our pasture had a marshy section in it where the creek would over flow and saturate the ground making it hard to walk through with out having some type of a dilemma. At this particular time the suction of the mud monster held onto my rubber boot making my stocking foot come out of the boot. Even though it might be funny, the point is once something or someone gets a foothold on you, you’re either stopped or extremely hindered in your journey.

Paul exhorts the believers in Ephesus as they fulfill the purposes of God in their lives to not make the mistake of giving place or foothold to the enemy. He says, “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. (Eph 4:26-27)

The enemy gets a foothold in our lives when we willfully sin and continue to walk in disobedience, as well as when we are entertaining wrong beliefs and doctrine in our lives that are contrary to God’s word. James teaches us that temptation comes when we are drawn away by our own “desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death”. (James 1:14-15) When we are pulled away by our fleshly desires the enemy waits to ensnare us and fasten his hold on us.

Recently I was in Alaska for a wedding and while heading to our destination on Hwy 1 we were paralleling the Cook Inlet. I was awe struck at the beauty of the mountains cascading into the inlet with a trace of snow up high on the peaks. My driver was explaining how the tide comes in and out at drastic fluctuations levels up to approximately 29 ft. twice a day. When the tide is out, much of it has no water and is just mud. They call it the Mud flats, which have many stories, some fact and some legends of how different ones have gotten stuck.

The mud is supposedly made up of Glacier Silt, which I understand are finer than the sand and are shaped like billions of small angles that lodge together making an airtight seal around anything that happens to penetrate a soft spot. One such story many years ago is of a husband and wife who were going to cross over the mud flats on four wheelers and dredge for gold but in the midst of the process the wife step off into the mud and ended up getting so stuck that they could not get her free before the frigid tide came back in causing her to drown.

Paul encouraged young Timothy to walk worthy before the Lord so not to get ensnared by the devil. (1 Tim 3:7) Jesus said in John 14:30, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. Jesus who is our example shows us that we can follow His example and live without the devil having a foothold in our lives.

Anytime we venture off the beaten path that God has set for us, walking in places we have no business in, we can get caught in the silk of the enemy. In John’s Gospel we read where Jesus said, “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed”. Jesus came to set us free from the foothold of the enemy. We read in 1 John 3:8 where it says, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil”. So quit giving the enemy a foothold!