Khan’s Cat & Satan Sparrows

Genghis Khan was a brilliant military leader who united the Mongol tribes and created a fearsome army with himself at its head. He ruled an empire that stretched across Asia, from the wintry woods of Ukraine to the Eastern shores of Korea. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire.

In 1207, his men swept across the Gobi Desert to attack China, but they were halted at the walled city of Voloha. Here the hard-riding Mongols discovered that their cavalry tactics were virtually useless in attacking a heavily fortified city. There seemed to be no way to defeat the city from the outside.

Khan offered to end the siege in exchange for an unusual tribute: one thousand cats and ten thousand sparrows. The request was unusual but rather a cheap price for security and seemingly benign, so they decided to comply.

It turned out to be a terrible choice.

Shortly after they delivered the tribute, Kahn ordered his men to tie puffs of cotton to the animals’ tails, and then set the cotton on fire. The frightened creatures fled back to their city. A thousand fires seemed to break out everywhere at the same time, and the citizens of Volohai rushed to fight them. At that moment, the Mongols attacked and Volohai fell and soon China would as well.

Satan works the same way:

He doesn’t seem to ask for much. Give him things that seem small, unimportant: Just a bit of your time, a piece of your pocketbook, a snippet of your morality. What harm could it be if we let him influence your entertainment, or convince you to make your child’s education in math and science more important than their Biblical one, or remove God from a tiny aspect of your life? Harmless gossip. Just one drink. A skipped worship service. A few meaningless sparrows. A few insignificant cats.

And here we are still putting out the fires.

so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.

2^nd Corinthians 2:11

Satan can’t defeat us from the outside. However, He can burn us out from the inside. But only if we allow his influence in. The battle for our soul doesn’t occur on a desert battlefield or in a castle on a hill but in our heart and minds. Satan is constantly trying to implant the smallest of ideas he can ignite.

So be aware. Stand Firm. Don’t listen to the liar no matter how little the lies seem to be.

Comments

Until Midnight

In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back. I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

The Gift You Give Yourself

I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me. There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15). I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven. So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives. When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog