I hear a story from Beth Guckenberger (director of B2B Ministries for orphan care) that I cannot stop thinking about. She tells a story of how she’d been thinking about Luke 10:19 and praying about it. Here, Jesus says: “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” At the time she was thinking about this verse, her husband sends her a picture from India where a man is using a strange technique to keep a King Cobra snake from harming him.
The man holds up a tiny piece of snake cartilage in between his thumb and forefinger, and the snake slithers away in fear. Beth used the illustration and video to show us a picture of a snake retreating in fear. It’s a great picture of our authority over the power of the enemy.
But I couldn’t get over the first part and how it was dead tissue that most scared the snake. I thought about how Satan cannot handle the truth of our own crucified life and how we are dead to sin and alive in Christ. He slithers back when we hold up the truth of a life now hidden in Christ. I hold up my old, dead life and proclaim to Satan that I belong to Jesus now. And the enemy runs and hides.