Dealing with the 300 Little Foxes

UV 1245/10,000 Dealing with The 300 Little Foxes
And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and turned tail to tail, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails.

Judges 15 v 4



Every sin starts from three broad inner sources that is embedded in every human being: lust of the eye, pride of life and lust of the flesh. Now, each of these play out in some hundred variations in human life and experience. These also combine and reinforce each other. They are as subtle as foxes and as cunning in terms of the stealth and killer instinct with which they creep into the vineyard of our lives. Their free running around would destroy the fruit of our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. Every human moral failure is a tale of the work of these subtle but ruthless foxes. These are the kind of foxes that eventually destroyed the potential of Samson who though physically was extremely strong and powerful proved weak and vulnerable in handling these foxes. Ironically, Samson showed us the way to deal with these 300 foxes, many of which are paired in terms of similarity- pride and arrogance, lust and adultery, covetousness and cunning, boredom and laziness, jealousy and envy, fear and distrust and so on. We need to catch them and tie them up by their tails and set them on fire with prayer, the Word and the fire of the Holy Spirit.



These 300 foxes are the personal demons or weaknesses that have haunted humanity from the time of Adam and Eve. They are the agents of the enemy of our souls. We need to not just pair them up and tie them up end to end by their tails and send them for utter and complete destruction into the enemy’ territory or fields. There is an inner impulse or desire or urge within us and there is an external opportunity, force or manifestation drawing us to do that which our true spirit does not want to be involved in any way. Hence, the inner fox driving us to do what is forbidden by the Spirit of God, our own conscience and the Word as well as the external fox of the opportunity, force or manifestation needs to be tied tail to tail and set on fire with our spiritual firebrands and driven away into the fields or flames of hell never to return. Samson’s strategy was that the paired foxes tied tail to tail would try to run in opposite directions instead of towards each other and thereby virtually tear each other up. Similarly, our inner impulses should repulse the external forces and manifestations. We need to do everything possible to make ourselves sin-proof.

The difficulty is that the foxes are so little and so subtle initially that it is difficult to spot them or to even know that they are around in our nature and in our circumstances. But they tend to grow fat and bigger as we feed them little by little with tiny compromises and that is when they bring our lives and our testimony to ruin in due course. We should not be deceived by their size or looks for they would if allowed to remain and grow chew off sizeable chunks from our peace, our reputation, our lives and legacy. We need to set up alarms and traps for the little foxes and be sensitive to the signals we receive from others and the Holy Spirit.

Prateep V Philip