Acts 19:8-20

I hate snakes. They’re my number one phobia, and I prefer to have absolutely nothing to do with them. Kids bring home a book about snakes from the library? Daddy will read that one to you. Snake exhibit at the zoo? I’ll wait outside. Seeing a snake in the wild? That’s me running in the opposite direction!

Listen, I know snakes are around, but we have an unspoken agreement: they go about their business and I go about mine. I don’t disturb them, they don’t disturb me, and we all live in relative peace…

…until we don’t.

A few years ago it became necessary to take out and replace the original landscaping around our house. Up until that point we hadn’t seen many snakes in our yard, but after we disturbed their habitat? We saw snakes all over for weeks, and my fight or flight response was on high alert for weeks after we saw the last one! 

We had the authority as homeowners to do whatever we needed to protect the structural integrity of our house. It wasn’t merely a beautification project; the holly trees had become overgrown, and their roots threatened the foundation of our home. 

Sounds a little bit like the Spiritual Authority in Everyday Places we’ve been learning about, yeah?

We hadn’t counted on stirring up the resident snake population, but honestly we should have expected it when we started inserting ourselves into their kingdom. 

In Acts chapter 19, Paul stirred up the “snakes” real good when he started boldly teaching about Jesus. By “snakes” I mean those who had bent their wills against the truth (v9), and those who tried to use the authority of Jesus without being under the authority of Jesus (v13).

Those kinds of snakes are always around. Even if there’s an unspoken agreement–we don’t disturb them, they don’t disturb us–we should expect that those kinds of snakes will come slithering out of their holes when we insert ourselves into their kingdoms.

In other words, when we have the authority to do something in Jesus’s name and follow through boldly and unapologetically, we can expect to experience some resistance from the spiritual realm.

In Paul’s case the snakes got what was coming to them, the evil spirit they were trying to expel in Jesus' name gave them a lesson they surely never forgot (v15), and people turned to Jesus in a deeper, more life-changing way. (v17-20).

For the record: it’s always worth it to stir up the snakes for the good of the Kingdom, even when you feel like running away.

Stirring up the snakes comes at a cost. Protecting the foundation of our home against the roots of oversized holly trees was disruptive to not only the resident snake family, but to our daily lives and our bank account. The end result was worth the cost of time, money, and snake sightings! Is there an area of your life where it’s time to start stirring up the “snakes?”