Are You Being Played Like a Fiddle?

      Have you ever realized a time in your life when you knew  without a shadow of doubt that you have just been played like a fiddle by someone?  Today I was!  It took at least a month to see the cleverly devised schemes clearly laid out before me.  And then suddenly bam! There it was in all it's glory...unfolded and in the light and there was nothing I could do.  Though no harm was done, I was slowly drawn into a web of "tales" that made no sense in the initial stages but when all was said and done there it was.....glaring in my face and birthed into the fullness of what was intended but hidden in the stages before birth.
    You might be wondering, what in the world am I talking about by now! But here is the thing to consider.  Everyday we Christians face an enemy intent on deceiving and playing mind games with us because he knows that we can be tricked if we are not on our guard. In the NT there are words of admonishment to be "wise as a serpent but innocent as a dove."  I confess that I am sort of on the naive side of things when it comes to reading  people but I have gotten better over the years after being burned enough times.
     This is because I so want to trust another human being! A Mistake.....we are required to walk with our eyes open and soberly viewing our world just like Christ did when he called the Pharisees a brood of vipers!  White washed sepulchres!  In other words dead on the inside!
     He did not waste his words, and neither should we.  This is not to say that we should call our co-workers vipers the next time we are lied to but we should be aware of the reality if they are not in the kingdom and we are.  Light and dark do not mix well but nevertheless we are in the  world and not of the world as Christians and we understand these things.  We  bear the burden and are standard bearers of a certain truth that we carry because of this knowledge.
     I will wait the time necessary to see the end results of someone's tales and what fruit it will eventually bear but I know this already....a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree cannot do what the good tree does without Christ's intervention.
    Also those who put out snares for others to be caught in will eventually be caught in their own snare.  This we have on the WORD of LIFE'S" testimony.