Trapped

“Whom would the king wish to honor more than me?” Esther 6:6

Have you ever just wanted to freeze a single moment in time and stay there, just a little bit longer than all the rest? If Haman had known what was coming up next in his own story I think this is the moment he would have chosen to freeze. In his mind at this point, he is the one that the king is preparing to honor and so he’s suggesting to the king how he himself should be glorified. You know, because who would the king wish to honor more than Haman? At this point in the story Haman hasn’t fully considered who exactly he’s dealing with, and he won’t fully come into that realization until it is far too late for him to back out of the trap he has set and it ends up springing on him.

And boy if that doesn’t remind me of Satan I don’t know what does! Satan sets traps all day every day and yet over and over they only end up springing on him in the end. Just look at the Son of David. From day one Satan was out to trap Jesus. From Herod trying to convince the wise men to come back and tell him where the child king was so that he too could “worship” him. To that night at the Last Supper when Judas fled from the room to meet up with the Jewish officials in order to capture Jesus away from the crowds. Mmmm, but that’s my favorite trap of all! That was the trap that Satan set fully expecting it to end Jesus and the Father’s plans for saving the Jews. I don’t think Satan had any clue what his actions would do. Unlike God, Satan is not omnipotent or omnipresent. He can’t know the future before it happens, nor can he be in all places at all times. I believe that he truly had no clue to the breadth of God’s actual plan for Jesus and His death on the cross. Satan set a plan into motion that He will regret for all of eternity.

Satan set a trap to kill Jesus, and he succeeded, but little did he know that his success was his ultimate undoing. It was through Jesus’ death that the rest of us can LIVE. It is through the blood that Jesus shed on that cross that we are eternally forgiven. It is because He died that He was given the opportunity to rise again from that sealed grave and to prove to one and all once and for all that He was, is and will always be Christ the Messiah! Satan sets traps every day. And while *some* go off and capture us in their teeth; ALL of them are his ultimate undoing! Every. Single. One of them.

Right now there is something that you’re feeling trapped in; a dead-end job, a financial situation you can’t seem to climb up out of, a marriage that just feels miserable, a child that has broken your heart with a rotten decision, whatever it is – give it to God. That trap may have sprung on you, but it doesn’t have to be YOUR undoing, make it Satan’s!!! Take that mess he’s made of your life and allow God to turn it into a message! I’ve made so many bad choices in my life; choices that affected me for a very long time and still do to this day. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be my prison. What if they are my key?!? And they can be if I let them. I can take those bad choices and decide that I’m not going to let them define me. Just because I burn one tray of toast doesn’t make me a bad cook. Just because I misspell a word doesn’t make me a bad writer. Just because I stumble doesn’t make me a bad dancer. It just means that something happened. And I can choose to allow that thing to drag me down or wake me up. Learning to walk isn’t about falling down, it’s about learning how to control those falls and more importantly how to get back up.

Sunflowers have a special place in my heart, mostly because once upon a time I had the privilege of meeting a very special one who taught me a very important lesson. Bloom where you’re planted – no matter what.

This sunflower was growing at the end of my neighbor’s driveway from a seed that he had spit out. As in this seed had been:

Harvested,

Seasoned,

Roasted,

Packaged,

Purchased,

Chewed up,

Spit out,

Still managed to SPROUT,

IN A DROUGHT,

Avoided being mown off,

And grew into a beautiful little sunflower right where it had been planted.

It had literally been through sunflower seed hell AND BACK and STILL managed to grow and bloom right where God had planted it. In a spot He knew I wouldn’t be able to miss it, or its story. 😉

You too may be feeling like you’re going through hell and perhaps even back, but I have Good News for you. Jesus died for YOU. Jesus loves you more than life itself and He would rather die than to live one more day without YOU by His side for all of eternity. No matter what you’re going through, no matter how trapped you feel right now, know this. Jesus loves YOU. He loves you and He is with you, no matter what. He has promised never to leave you or forsake you and He isn’t able to lie so He must have meant it when He said it. No matter what you’ve done, He will NEVER leave you. And really, believe it or not, there is nothing new under the sun that you could have done that He hasn’t seen before. I can guarantee it. On the cross Jesus made the choice to forgive you once and for all. Now you need to make the choice to forgive yourself.