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). Satan can't just force us into his will but he can distract us till we forget that we should be resisting at all. In Mark 4:19 Jesus tells us “but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” The Devil uses those points to confuse and confound us. It's hard to resist the Devil when we are so busy doing everything else. The longer we stay distracted, the easier we become to control. Instead of making the Devil run, we let him control us.

In 2nd Corinthians 2:11, we are told, “… so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” Don’t get fooled when Satan waves his chair in your face and try to distract you. The Devil can only keep you caged if you let him. Jesus opened the door to freedom, and it we keep focused on the reward nothing can stand in our way!

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