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Horror Houses Without Exit

I don't like horror films, fiction.... for that sake anything that horrifies me. However, one day I had to enter a show in a fair. That was a horror house. My friends forced me to go with them. I weighed the pros and cons. It is better to go with them than be labelled a coward.

Beyond, the ticket counter there was this dark tunnel, walls painted black, then the eery noises of witches and demons. Somewhere from the dark a skeleton stretched its hand towards me and almost reached my throat. Then there was a vampire waiting at a dark turn of the tunnel staring at me with its long teeth. However, I moved past it in the company of my friends.

To be frank, it was not the company of the friends that gave me the courage to move past each eery and horrifying shows. It was the red sign at every corner of the wall. 'EXIT' in red. That is the legal requirement. Anyone who is about to pass out, or can't take anymore can slip through that narrow door behind that sign. However, I moved on.

But in real life, there are horror houses without exit. Daniel had been in of those. That was the lions' den. The Bible says that he was thrown into a den packed with hungry lions. The story is found in the Book of Daniel 6. It was a conspiracy that landed Daniel in the den of hungry lions. Daniel and the hungry lions spent one whole night staring at each other. The lions had no appetite that night. But the morning following the king found out that Daniel is unharmed by the lions. So, he ordered to throw Daniel's enemies to the lions and the lions had a royal feast.

The den had no exit, so God took control of the lions. However, it was horrifying.
Sometimes, God will lead his people to fight it out as Paul had too many times. He had to be a gladiator in Ephesus. He had to fight wild animals in the arena in Ephesus. When the doors of the arena were slammed shut, and the cage of the hungry lion (possibly) screeched open, Paul might have looked around for an exit sign. But there was none.

He was not a gladiator. He eked out a living by making and repairing tents. As a scholar, he spent most of his time his head buried in the scrolls and parchments. He did not have time for body-building. His muscles were not strong. He had a hump on his back, or he had poor eyesight (or both). However, he had to take on the advancing lion. He won! That is why he could write about it in 1 Corinthians 15:32. Sometimes where there are no exits, we have to fight it out.

With God on our side, we really don't need exits from our situations. Exits are for the cowards and the weak. God puts us in dens and closed arenas without exit so that he can train our fingers for the battle (Psalm 144:1).

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