Throughout the Word of God, you will see the words trap, pit, snare. It’s NOT a person, adultery, lust, love. It’s not what you think.

Who? What? How? 

These snares are erected in specific places to catch the person it was intended for. We are going to explore who these snares are intended to catch,  what purpose they have, and how one breaks free from them.

To understand the pit, trap, snare, net and how it captures and creates bondage and chains, it’s important to know and understand the hunter and what it’s looking for and targeting.

Hunters know their prey. They have a specific target and have studied it well. They know the paths their targets take, their weaknesses, and the best moment to strike. They know the habits and patterns and they know their territory. I would say they know their target better than the target knows itself because it’s the JOB of the hunter to study and know because its life is dedicated to killing and destroying its prey

The hunter doesn’t set up traps in places that the target doesn’t visit. He sets them up where he knows his target will go. THAT is why he is successful. 

If someone is behaving exactly as expected, they will be easy targets for the hunter. The same goes for those that are not a target for the hunter. The snares and pits he creates are only designed for the target. 

You can’t blame the hunter for catching the prey that walked right into its trap when they were not supposed to be there in the first place.

Yet, that is what we as Standers do all the time when we blame the enemy, blame the other person they are with.

Look at these scriptures.

And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a net, and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is ensnared. Ecclesiastes 7:26

The mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit [deep and inescapable]; He who is cursed by the LORD [because of his adulterous sin] will fall into it. Proverbs 22:14



WHO?
Who are the pits, snares, traps for? Those who are walking in sin, separated from the Lord and not on the righteous path. If our spouses were walking in right relationship with God, the Word says that they would escape, be delivered. 

The righteous man is delivered from trouble; in his place the wicked man goes in. Proverbs 11:8

The enemy is out to hunt down those who are sinning. That includes unbelievers and Christians. Anyone that is following the lusts of the eyes and flesh will be on a path that is set with snares, traps, pitfalls. 

A righteous person will be tormented by lawlessness and see those pits and snares and it will grieve them. They look upon those things and see them as the snare and trap they are. 

He rescued righteous Lot, who was tormented by the immoral conduct of unprincipled and ungodly men 8 (for that just man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by what he saw and heard of their lawless acts), 9 then [in light of the fact that all this is true, be sure that] the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10and especially those who indulge in the corrupt passions of the sin nature, and despise authority. 2 Peter 2:7-9

This is why it’s important to keep things in perspective. If you are living righteous, they are perishing in their sins and facing punishment, then you need to keep this perspective. Instead of grieving over what they are doing to you, you should be grieving over the path they are heading. Instead of grieving over what is being done to you, you should be thankful that YOU are awake, not lost, but living on the path that leads to life and not death. We tend to lose sight of the bigger picture when we make this all about us, and not about Jesus. 

WHAT?

Snares are there to serve a purpose. Catch the sinner while they are straying from the path they were supposed to be on. If they were not guarding themselves, if they looked upon things with love, lust, and desire that were immoral, they would not see the snare as Lot saw it, because righteousness is not found within them. But these snares will bind them in chains and produce punishment and consequences. For those that love sin, evil, lawlessness, wickedness, and hate God and His morals………..these snares will feel like home to them. But for those that are God’s children, these snares will feel like a prison to them and make them miserable in due time. These snares are created to separate the tares from the wheat. Help God’s children overcome their love for something they were not created to love. In time, the snare will serve its purpose to make the sinner WANT to draw close to God to be free. 

HOW?

King David was a perfect example of how a child of God can get caught in a snare. First, he was not walking on a path he should have been. He strayed. He was restless and Wandering at Twilight, a time when man gets caught in sin. It’s a place of discontent and where they believe things are hidden in the dark from God. A place where they feel they can sin in secret. But twilight is a place where their sins will create a snare and capture them. 

The adulterer waits for the twilight, saying, ‘No one will see me then.’ He hides his face so no one will know him. Job 24:15

‘That’s why God can’t see what I am doing! How can he judge through the thick darkness? Job 22:13

When a man/woman has secret immoral issues in their heart and they secretly want to fulfill them, they will do it in the dark believing the lie that God won’t see them. This creates a place of entrapment, and the trap will keep them bound until they turn to the Lord to be set free. They must repent. And they must let go of the things that helped them in the snare.

Certain things that will keep a person stuck in the snare are the unwillingness to forgive others. The inability to overcome fear or desire to give up something that they found in the snare.

Snares are powerful because they touch a place in someone’s heart, mind, soul that gave them something they were missing in their life. Something they acquired through another person when they could have gotten it from the Lord…..but didn’t know how.

People get snared by getting their worth, value, identity from other people. 

When food gave me comfort, I became ensnared not by my love for food, but by my need and desire for comfort and escape. 

People get snared not by the people, but by what the people are giving them. Giving them value, hope, and worth, building them up, and telling them how important they are. Making them feel respected, loved, admired, and cherished. We become snared by things that we are missing out of in our own lives.

A woman that never felt loved, worthy, valued, listened to, important and validated, will become snared by a man that gives her all that. Lack creates HUGE gaping holes in our lives and when someone comes and fills that hole up, we can misplace our love for that whole being filled, with the person that filled it. The thought of going back to where we felt unloved, unworthy, uncherished, undesired feels like death to us. Sometimes we don’t even realize we have a need.

Many people will say they were not happy. But in truth, they didn’t realize they were EMPTY until all of sudden, the snare opened up and the flattering tongue came and filled an empty space in them. All of sudden, that empty place that had been crying out for so long, the thing that was bothering them, but they just could not put their finger on it came to the light and they had an aha moment.

“It was YOU” they cry out. “YOU were the one not meeting my needs! You were the one not making me feel whole, complete, worthy, valuable, loved, cherished, and adored. It was YOU all this time. I can see that now because I just found someone that has made me come alive and given me all that I have been craving. I was dying a slow death with you, but this PERSON has made me see what I have been missing out of all this time.” THAT is the lie and the purpose of the person that carries the strange woman/strange man spirit.

This is a spirit on a person that is meant to lure a lost person who doesn’t know their value, worth, or identity in GOD…………not man……….into a trap. I am going to say this again because it’s SO important. Anyone that seeks man for their identity will be left unfulfilled and lacking, and this creates a void that the strange woman (man)/adulterous spirit comes to take advantage of.

This spirit is a mastermind of flattery and ego-building. It will fill that void that the person has while enforcing that YOU are the enemy that came to set out and destroy them.

This spirit’s job is to keep them bound in looking for a PERSON instead of God. As long as your spouse has all their needs met by a person, they won’t need to know God to get their true value, worth, and identity.  These snares lead to DEATH!

King Solomon and his mother Bathsheeba often wrote about the lure of the strange woman(man) adulterous spirit and how it lures people to the grave through flattery. They gave clear directions and instructions on how to use wisdom to guard against this snare.  It’s found in Proverbs 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9.

If a person is snared by the adulterous, strange woman SPIRIT, the way out is through knowing who they are in JESUS. To stop looking to man for value and worth. Stop looking to man to fulfill. And the way that happens is by being OK with God being the one you get your needs met.

Many fear that if God is enough, then God won’t allow them to have a person in their life. I can’t tell you how many people have come to realize this fear. “If God is enough, then why would He help restore my marriage? I am afraid the moment I make God that important, where He is my husband, then I will lose all hope of ever having my spouse back.” 

 Dear one, that is not true. God wants you to have your spouse back but doesn’t want a person to hold the power of where your value, worth, identity, and purpose come from. He wants all those things to come from Him……….for both of you. That is the only way to ensure that two people are not so vulnerable to the pits and snares of the enemy that comes to take advantage of your weakness. 

This is why the snares become so powerful for some to really struggle to break free from. They don’t want to be attached to the person they know is wrong for them, but because that person is fulfilling a deep need, and they are not willing to give that fulfillment up, can’t understand how to get that need met from their Father, they remain attached to the source. 

That is why you can’t understand when they say to you, “I don’t want to be with them, but I can’t let go.” It’s not them they love……….but what they are giving them, which is a false sense of identity.

Pray for the person that hosts the strange woman/man spirit. Pray for them to come to know the Lord so they may find their own identity in Him and stop being used by the enemy to flatter and keep others away from the Lord.

Pray for your spouse to seek God first, to know Him, and come to know who they are IN HIM. Pray for them to want above all else, to seek God before any other relationship and to be brave and courageous to be ok with God being THAT first love.

 

Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger