Are you smarter than the elephant?

“Affliction shall not rise up the second time” (Nahum1:9b)

I love circus. Just watching the display performances of different animals is beautiful to behold
coupled with many differing acrobatic displays and many risky and dangerous moves that
people performed for the entertainment of their fellow being, also to be enjoyed are the jokers
who pokes with their buffoonery. What intrigues me most especially is how much time and
energy these people invest for the one to two hours display. For many of them, their
performance may not be for more than five minutes but it would have taken them months of
series of practices before the five minutes act. The animals display is even much more to be
appreciated. Most of the time the loudness of the applause for the animals is not much of what
they did but of what they were made to do, for these animals are removed from their natural
habitat and are then coerced into doing what most of the time they will not naturally do, they
are even made to choreograph with their fellow animal. This is so wonderful. The applause goes
much more to those who may have spent years to make those animals to conform to these
acts.

That reminds me of the interesting scriptures in the Bible. Rom12:2 said we should not conform
to this world but that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds. When we give
our lives to Christ we are like wild animals just caught in the jungle of life, so be godly we
progressively learn God’s ways which is systematically unlearning those wild ways. It will be
foolhardy for you not to make time for God’s word, prayer and worship and expect a
transformation into His ways. That means it is possible to be born again and yet be
untransformed into God’s way. Just like the animals that were taken to unknown terrain and
made to do what they would most likely not do; you too by careful learning and yielding to the
transformational power of God’s word can be changed to be Christ like even though this
character was not naturally in your animalistic wild lifestyle. If wild animal can be tamed, so can
you by the word of God if you let it. It is therefore abnormal for any child of God to attribute
any negative way of life to be his short coming, for in saying that he means the word of God
through the Holy Spirit and indirectly Jesus has not been able to transform him. And finally just
like the circus animal, it is the display of our transformed life in our daily lives in the market
place (in the normal day to day life) which is a bigger circus that will cause men to applaud our
heavenly father and of course Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. For the scripture said in Heb12:1
that we are encompassed by great cloud of witnesses; these witnesses includes those who have
passed through the circus of life and have succeeded in making their God proud, our trainer,
the Holy Spirit, Jesus the word of God and God Himself. I am wont to believe also that the
scorners on the sideline are among the witnesses; I mean those who want to laugh God to
scorn for a job not well done in your life. These include the devil and his cohorts. My brethren
are men and the devil’s cohorts applauding your God for a job well done in your life or does
your life make them disdain Him?

From the title of this message I refer to the circus elephants. For better understanding, let me
give you brief background information about the circus elephants. They are usually caught
when they are very young. At that time they are very wild, so in other to retrain them, a strong
twine is tied around one of their legs to a strong stake. Naturally, the elephant will struggle to
free itself from the restrain, but because this is too strong for it, over a period of time, it will
register into the elephant subconscious that it is no use trying, because series of trials had only
succeeded in putting strains on its leg but not freedom. The circus trainer will keep the elephant
tied with same type of twine and tied to the same stake till it is of full age. The elephant at full
age is about three times the size of its young one yet it remains tied to the same stake. The
truth of the matter is that with the least effort, the elephant is able to yank itself off the stake
and cut the twine, but the irony is that it will not for as long as it is tied to that stake.

The big question is why will the elephant want to remain tied to the stake? Is it that it has now
fallen in love with the circus train or is it now only familiar with that environment or is it
enjoying the applauds and the attention it gets from the circus? None of these plausible
answers explains the peculiar situation of the circus elephant. The answer to the quiz is the
short memory of the elephant. The elephant having struggled for months to rid itself off the
stake unsuccessfully have finally given up trying and even when it was big enough to rid itself
off the stake, the only thing it remembered was the series of trials he had in the past and failed,
so it concludes “it’s no use trying any longer, I have not succeeded these past years and am I
won’t now”.

Back to the title of the message, “are you smarter than the circus elephant? This is the very
important quiz you will have to answer the devil, but once you are not able to answer him it
means you and the circus elephant are pals!!!

For one as a Nigerian, I have come to the conclusion that an average Nigerian is not wiser that
the circus elephant. This our leaders know so well, so they play the mind game with us because
of our short memory. For example since independence our leaders have not for once changed
their tactics of putting us in perpetual slavery and we too like the elephant have had no reason
to change our ways of thinking. In other to continue their fiefdom over us, they keep dividing us
with ethnic and religious differences all the time and we play along. These two chance cards
have always override ideology. That is why we have never elected a president based on
ideological convictions but on ethnic or religious divide. While we accept our fate and keep up
the act like the circus elephant, these circus trainers (I mean our leaders) of various ethnic
divide keep feeding on our ignorance. They know that all it takes is for us to say no to their
continued divide and rule tactics but since we have concluded it’s no use they will keep on
feeding fat on our naiveté. We have almost turned ourselves to a group of insane people doing
the same thing and expecting different results. Nigerians, are we wiser than the circus
elephants?

Our base scripture say, “affliction will not rise the second time”. Affliction is any form of
discomfort, trouble, distress, hardship, maltreatment, evil, suffering or adversity. It is anything
other than the will of God, anything that takes joy and peace away from us. We can summarize
afflictions to be the device of the devil against the children of God and it could be physical,
emotional, financial or spiritual. The important thing in that scripture is that it will and must not
return again. It’s like breaking the cycle of failure, lack, stagnancy, bareness, bondage etc. The
scripture also put a picture to mind that the devil is not supposed to perpetually have input in
our lives. Though most of the time God has perfected ways of using his misdeeds to effect his
will, but that is not to say that he is permitted to always knock us down. For every affliction we
have gone through, they are not permitted to be repeated in our lives again. So it is out of place
for a child of God to keep going for an unending deliverance on the same issue for it is an
indication of repeated bondage. If you must keep repenting over a misdeed, even if you call it
short coming, it is still a repeated affliction. You should be fed up now to be continually
disappointed by the opposite sex, continuous biz failure, miscarriages etc. For affliction to rise
up for you the second time or third or fourth or tenth time means you are not smarter than the
circus elephant.

The challenge to us child of God is to be able to look the devil square in the eye and tell him,
“not again!” Don’t agree with any situation that your heavenly father did not agree with, you
have been cheated before by the devil but now you should know better. Moreover, you are not
who you used to be, now by the reason of the word of God that you have been feeding on, by
the reason of your consistent life of prayer and by the reason of your constant fellowship with
your heavenly father, your spiritual muscle have greatly developed and now you are a giant in
the spirit. The devil may have succeeded in getting you then, but he cannot and should not
again. Let him know and tell him, “devil! I am smarter than the elephant!!! I know my worth
and capabilities now, I am not the ignorant wimpy guy you used to know; now I know my right, I
know my position in Christ and I stand in my victorious position which Christ had obtained for
me!!”! Hallelujah!!!

The only time you are not able to square up to the devil is if after the previous time you are still
your good old wimpy self, you have done nothing with your spiritual muscle. You still give the
least attention to God’s word, your prayer time suffers greatly and you do not bother in the
place of worship. If this is your case, you may shout till you are blue in the face that affliction
will not rise again, but it will. You are still a spiritual neophyte after being born again for more
than five years; you still do not know when the spirit of God speaks, the word of God is still
boring to you, you are still looking for people to pray for you or to help you pray and you cannot
worship God. My brethren, you won’t know what to do even if the devil visits your abode fifty
times.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for us to wake up and realize that any word in the Bible are not
just meant to sound sweet to our hearing, they can only be spiritually discerned and this is what
gives us the victory. As long as the word of God is still just head knowledge to you, you are no
different from a professor and a PHD does not preclude you from the attacks of the devil, rather
it takes revelation in the truth of God’s word to nullify and neutralize devil’s onslaughts.

But if after developing a hungry heart for God’s word, live a continuous life of prayer and be
consistent in your worship and the devil is still able to scare you, trouble you, afflict you,
distress you and cause you to panic, then you are not smarter than the elephant. The question
to you dear one is, “are you now smarter than the circus elephant?”