Demons And Tidy Lives
"When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and not finding any, it says, `I will return to my house from which I came.'
"And when it comes, it finds it swept and put in order.
"Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first."
Luke 11:24-26
People put a lot of energy into sorting, managing, and beautifying the trivial aspects of their lives.
At a certain point, a person comes to ask, "What good is any of this? This life may look good to others, but what does it matter to me? This life maybe orderly, but where is its basis?"
Occasionally such people consider how they get up in the morning and go to work. They go to bed, and they start all over again. They begin to wonder where the meaning is in it all, where their meaning lies.
When people are released from their demons, when they are set free from their obsessions, their anxieties, their neurosis, their dark and lawless thoughts, the demons wander restlessly.
The victims who have been set free often begin their restless activities as well. Such victims busy themselves with empty delusions to the point where their old masters find grounds to return to the places they have left.
The demons are not attracted to people who are 'well swept' and 'put in order' because they like orderliness for its own sake. They recognize the defiance and vanity in jumping through such empty hoops.
When a person begins to understand the emptiness of it all despair sets in. They say, 'All the things I have done amount to nothing, and I am nothing.' The temptation toward suicide becomes more prominent even though it was present from the beginning.
And suicide is the culmination the demonic hosts wish for.
The deception is not that a person has become nothing. Indeed the Apostle writes,
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2
The deception of the demons is to pronounce such a man hopeless.
The demons work diligently to convince men there is no inner life except for tidying and managing the trivialities of life. They do not want anyone to believe in a way out, and Jesus is the way out.
If a man or woman is willing to receive Jesus into their lives, the Holy Spirit will live inside of that man or woman. Such a person discovers what it means to have their needs met with divine completeness.
God does a far superior job of ordering and tidying the lives of people when they allow him into their lives. When a man allows God to guide him, he begins to leave behind his crooked ways, his hypocrisy, and his phoniness. However ugly or unsightly he becomes on the surface, his care for his God and his neighbor as himself gives him an appearance more beautiful than the lillies of the field.
When the demons see that the Most High lives inside a person, they quickly leave. Such a person knows the joy of personally finding God in his or her heart, and that joy disgusts the unclean spirits.
Yes, God is able to plant hope in the strangest of circumstances. If He is there living inside someone, that person will always have the means of finding hope -the hope that nothing else can bring.
5 Comments:
Thank you for the insight into this portion of scripture that has always caused me to scratch my head and wonder. Truly, an empty home is an ivitation to squaters. Excellent post, BB.
"Truly, an empty home is an ivitation to squaters."
Well said, Joy. Sometimes a person's life can be an empty home.
Many of Christ's teachings are difficult to understand because they are so other-worldly (and because we are so worldly). If we had Christ's values -if we could see it through a child's eyes- it would be much easier for us to understand.
He takes us to that point of view, God's point of view, in time. That is what scripture is, God's point of view from outside space and time but also from within us. How blessed we are to have God's Word and what a miracle to be able to hold it in our hands and read it anytime! May we never take the miracle of God's written Word for granted.
An intriguing post.
I wonder about your statement that "God does a far superior job of ordering and tidying the lives of people" when they allow Him to. I do not contest that God does have a superior plan for our lives, but often I wonder just how neat and tidy His plans are! Both for His glory and out of love for us, He seems to delight in turning things upside down. Perhaps it has to do with our definition of order versus God's definition of order. Surely God looks at the inward condition of man, while we struggle to get past what is simply on the outside.
A lot of space to reflect on there. My remark about how God 'manages' and 'orders' was along the lines of divine wholesomeness and godliness. Even though John the baptist lived in the wild and ate locusts, he found a certain completeness in his intimacy with his God that no king found by means of his luxuries. Like the lilies of the field that do not toil, he was robed by the Lord himself, and this is the greatest outfitting of all.
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