It seems the world since Covid-19 has gotten into a lockdown mindset. We know the procedure, the steps we are both told to take and how to respond through social conditioning from the top down. Like a lockdown we are quick with the locks of: masking, hoarding, distancing ourselves or isolating and fearing death.
We are are locked and loaded for the next pandemic which some believe is on the horizon dwarfing the dress rehearsal of Covid-19. I am hoping and praying that this will just pass us by. Christians such as myself see pandemics as a direct attack of the enemy to kill, steal and destroy what God through his Church is doing in the earth. But despite Satan’s efforts he cannot limit the Church from bearing fruit in the earth through a lockdown of their own found in scripture. Jesus states in the gospel of John that, “If you abide in me and my Words abide in you, you shall bear much fruit.” This abiding is referred to as being grafted into the vine, locked down as it were.
I envision this type of organic lockdown of the vine being Jesus and us, the branches, locked into place with the four locks of prayer, Church fellowship, time in God’s Word and witnessing to others. One lock on each side of the branch. It is through a pandemic that the enemy tries to unlock each of these attachments and thereby separate the branches from the vine, but we must not let him. Fear of death is his greatest weapon.
Jesus promise, his Word “If you abide in my and my Words abide in you, you will bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” will not be void despite Satan’s efforts. The condition is, we must remain in him, locked down in prayer, in his Word, in fellowship, in witnessing even in the face of death. For the enemy will try everything to unlock us from Christ and one another with the lockdown of fear.