“If You Feed the Birds, Squirrels Will Come.”
Priscilla Van Sutphin
May 2007
“God has often used my little back patio for signs for me. Recently there have been ground squirrels come. The spring brought back the little orange breasted, and headed birds, and a sparrow family and some mourning doves I’ve been feeding. This time, ground squirrels also came, digging up plants, eating all the leaves off the flowering plants and digging up roots. I found myself thinking about this when God said the above. And I felt He wanted me to contemplate on it a bit.
The above I see as sort of a principle of spiritual warfare. These squirrels will uproot even cactus. I found myself frustrated cause I love animals but these rodents to me were rats with tails. They destroy everything and if they could they’d steal the bird’s food. They undermine yards, and it’s been reported they can create sinkholes from undermining the ground in your yard. They are a perennial problem here in California.
So these are not “good” visitors, but like rats, spiritually represent that which uproots and destroys. They also carry fleas that leave parasites under your skin, borrelosis. Some of the people here in the apts who have AIDS have been, because of their immune vulnerability affected by those type fleas from the squirrels. So this is very dangerous to have them close to habitation for that reason alone. I’d hate for my child to be affected by such.
I have seen the mourning doves even PECK at the squirrels defending their territory. That was amazing to watch. They know how to really defend themselves against the vermin, much to my surprise. I love birds. I love waking up in the morning and hearing their happy chirping and songs being sung. It is really a delight. So I love to put food out. But putting food out this year has brought the varmit cong ! LOL !
I felt as I pondered the Lord saying this sentence that He was showing us that when you are trying to feed the birds which represent those you are trying to bring to freedom in Christ, that you will attract the enemy. It is a principle of the Kingdom of God in conflict with the kingdom of Satan. Satan won’t bother with you if you are not reaching out to the lost. But if you are feeding the sheep, or birds, if you will, or reaching out to others God wants in His kingdom. YOU will attract the wrath of Satan and HE will try to steal and rob from you everything He can.
He will attack your finances. He will attack your family. He will attack your person, your health, your confidence in God, as that is ALWAYS His ploy. And you cannot LET the vermin in. You cannot help feed the vermin if you feed the birds, but you can KILL THEM. You can destroy the work of the destroyer by giving him the food that destroys him…the WORD OF GOD. Instead of giving seeds that feed the birds, you can give him rat food that he deserves. That is PROCLAMATIONS and DECLARATIONS that bring down HIS KINGDOM! He will attack every relationship trying to bring division between people. He will try to discredit you in the eyes of others. He will try to keep you sleepless so you get tired and run down. He’s send pestilence so that you have to get busy cleaning up the mess from that.
He will do ANYTHING HE can when you are supposed to be intimate with HIM, to try and destroy your time with GOD. You may thing those little irritations are just coincidence. THEY ARE NOT ! They are to test your peace, and steal your joy, and to try to make you tired so you don’t have energy to do the will of God, or to be intimate with Him, then he will unmercilessly attack you for NOT doing those things, trying to condemn you. He will even sent other "prophets" like he did with Jeremiah, sending Hananiah to defy him, to try and say you are not right ! He will send those who are BITTER or CONTROLING to try and intimidate you to their line of judgmental thinking. He will send critics, and false judges to try to diminish your confidence, or to accuse you of false doctrine - religious spirits trying to steal all of your JOY. He will send those who try to get you to doubt your calling and what God is saying. And the good news is, that the more like Jesus you become, the MORE you will get attacked.
Or he will try to tell you God doesn’t care about you by stealing your finances, trying to make you to curse God, like Job’s wife. He is either busy trying to accuse you to God, or God before you. He is the accuser. You cannot align yourself with the accuser. God has been so admonishing me in this area. Unless you are without sin, you have NO right to accuse someone else. You do have the right and responsibility to PRAY for them, and NOT witchcraft prayers, or mind control to make them think like you do - but to PRAY for God to release revelation of the TRUTH and to bless them. Jesus said to BLESS your enemies. He is trying to bring us to that place where we THINK that way.
It sometimes get’s difficult in the walk of life to discern, is this God allowing this, or something I need to take authority over and rebuke and defy. Well no matter what, you need to keep in INTIMACY with GOD, NO MATTER WHAT. It is the only place of safety to be in His presence, in the shadow of His wings. Anything that keeps you from that, needs to be evaluated in the spirit. God wants UNION with us, more than we want it. So HE is not the author of confusion or doubt, and He is NOT the harsh taskmaster. It is SATAN who is the harsh taskmaster. His kingdom runs on fear and hate, and competition.
If we draw into GOD, HE will show us what is going on. But we have to be PATIENT and allow patience to have it’s godly work in us, to gain understanding of what He is doing at the moment. So often I have forgotten this principle and have gotten off focus, by allowing pain and sickness to distract me, thinking I’d displeased God, when it was actually intercession.
Just yesterday, had an experience in the kitchen, going to drink some aloe, and suddenly got hit in the back like a pole going through it…just to the right of my spine midback. Then I got an email from Ras Robinson referring to a passage in Healing the Wounded Spirit book by John & Paula Sandford. [ p.285+] In that passage was an experience John had once with warlocks coming against him, and he got beat up at night and would wake up with bruising. Witches were coming in the spirit realm attacking him and his wife in the night watches.
Well for me, this was in the daytime, but nevertheless very real. I don’t want you to be ignorant brethren, as Paul sometimes says. The warfare is REAL. None of us are invulnerable yet except by the BLOOD of Jesus, and we need each other to be able to fight. The church has been too anemic for too long. You’ve heard it said that no man is an island. That is especially true in spiritual warfare. Even the apostles were sent out two by two. EVEN THEY SUFFERED AFFLICTION, PERSECUTION, WENT WITHOUT SLEEP, AND SUFFERED MUCH FOR THE KINGDOM. We need to support each other in prayer and fasting. Because believe me, the Satanists who have come out of their closet, and the Wiccans, etc, are doing their fasting and prayers religiously against us. The more HUMBLE we become the less vulnerable we become.
The more we are able to walk in FORGIVENESS & HUMILITY, the enemy will find nothing in us, and FEAR is the biggest open door as well.
Then there are the Muslims and Hindus cursing us in the same way, and they do not let up, so neither should we. We do not have the luxury to be spiritual wimps any longer. The Lord KNEW and taught these days would come and what did HE say ? He said He would raise up the tabernacle of DAVID in these days. [Acts 15] THAT is why you see people like Mike Bickle and Lou Engle and all over the world establishing 24/7 prayer AND WORSHIP. WORSHIP breaks the power of WITCHCRAFT. The enemy HATES worship going to GOD and will do ALL that he can to stop it, because He knows it too. He hates us praying together and will do ANYTHING to stop that. Remember what he did to the Israelites in the desert when Moses went up the mountain ? He got them convinced that God was abandoning them, and so he stirred them to idol worship. He got them into COMPLAINING in their circumstances and accusing each other, to STEAL THEIR WORSHIP AND PRAISE OF GOD. He KNEW that if he could do that, he could take many of them out !
WE MUST PAY ATTENTION TO THIS IN THIS HOUR because circumstances are NOT going to get better in the world. We know that from Revelation and Daniel which was full of lessons for our time. We must LIFT each other up when we see people are getting tired. I am so grateful that during times of feeling weary, God has always been faithful to bring those He wants to bring encouragement to me. HE IS SO KIND. We need to reread those things that will build our faith like the story of Daniel. He will quiet and muzzle the lions if we stay dependent and intimate with HIM. When we see that someone is in error we need to be heartbroken and pray for them. PRAYER WORKS !
Before I went to Russia the first time, I had an encounter with the lion that devours. He came in the night when I was starting to fall off to sleep. I heard behind me, as if right behind me, the growl of a lion. I was so tired, I said to the Lord, “Father, I am SO tired, YOU deal with him. “ Immediately I fell asleep, which is NOT normal for me, and woke up refreshed. He dealt with him so didn’t have to. Jesus IS FAITHFUL. He knows also when we are too weak to defend ourselves. In those times HE WILL FIGHT FOR US ! He is ever interceding for us in heaven. We just have to TRUST.
Remember that when you feed the birds, when you reach out and touch others, you can expect vermin to oppose you. But GOD is your wall of DEFENSE. HE IS YOUR KEEPER. HE never sleeps. The God of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps. HE will be a wall of FIRE around you, and the GLORY in your midst if you will rest in HIS MERCY AND GRACE. Don’t let the vermin stop you from feeding the little birds in the forest of this world. KEEP reaching out. Do not become afraid because of the roar of that terrible lion. Be a good soldier who is willing to suffer. Look in the natural at our soldiers coming home from IRAQ - maimed and without legs, arms, or eyes. What is in the natural is also in the spiritual. We WILL SUFFER, but those who suffer with HIM, SHARE IN HIS GLORY ! We have no right to get bitter and defensive ! Always remember there is a BIGGER LION – the LION OF JUDAH to defend you and HE HAS ALL POWER, ALL GLORY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH HIM. He is going to pour out GREAT GRACE.”
Love, Pris
Zech 12:10-11KJV And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
