The Donkey that had the last laugh!!

A Victim or a Victor – it’s our choice!

By Helen Jesze, 5^th July 2019

“If God is for us, who can be against us? …in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us…”

Romans 8, 31b + 37 KJV

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people…”

Genesis 50, 20 NLV

“Shake yourself from the dust, arise; Sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion!”

Isaiah 52, 2 NKJV

The story goes that one day a farmer heard pitiful cries coming from the well in his farmyard. He went and looked down, and saw his old donkey had fallen in. The well was deep and the donkey was very old, so the farmer thought it was too much trouble to try to pull it out, and the best thing to do would be to leave the donkey there and fill up the well!

So he called his friends and neighbours to help him; each brought a shovel and they began to shovel dirt into the well. It fell down and hit the donkey’s back, and at first, he cried even more. But after a while all was quiet. The farmer peered into the well and saw that every time another shovel of dirt came down, the donkey shook it off and stepped on top of it!

Soon the dirt was so high, that that old donkey just stepped out of the well and trotted off!

Well, the moral of this story is that Life often throws difficulties and problems until it seems we are snowed under. We are not at the ‘bottom of the barrel’, we feel we’re even underneath the barrel, and there’s no way out again!

People plot and plan against us, we know the bitterness of rejection and isolation and often we cannot understand why this should be. We have the opportunity to fall quickly into a “victim mentality”, and think the whole world is against us.

Our donkey was like this at first, and he could only see the sides of the well – a victim that couldn’t get out. Yet that very stuff which was threatening to stifle and swamp him, and could cause him to die, he came to see it as his passport to freedom! He just shook off the dirt and stepped on top of it, until eventually he emerged into the light again and trotted off, laughing at his persecutors! The victim became the Victor!

Not only Life and people, but also satan wants to cripple, bury and destroy us, but because we are conquerors in Jesus, let us shake off that stuff and stand upon it, making it a stepping-stone. The Nation of Israel was like a woman in captivity, but God called to them that they should shake off the dust and chains which bound them, for He had brought them freedom.

Joseph, sold by his brothers, imprisoned, lied about, forgotten – how many ‘shovels of dirt’ had been thrown on him, yet he came to see that what others had meant for evil, God was going to turn around for the good and salvation of multitudes. The same can happen to us. Satan thought he had got Jesus into a ‘well’, but driving Him to the death of the cross was the very thing God wanted, that we might be saved!

Let me encourage you today that you can also come to a new level in Christ. In the strength and power of Jesus, destroy that victim mentality and put on the Victor’s garment and attitude, and come out of YOUR well, out into God’s sunlight again!