“Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil” Proverbs 4:25–27 NIV.

Those words once appeared on the general orders of General Montgomery for the British Eighth Army in North Africa in World War II. I was serving at that time as a hospital attendant with those forces. The British and Allied forces were advancing; the Axis forces were retreating westward, away from Cairo, and as they retreated they left behind innumerable booby traps. For instance, an empty can would be filled with explosives or a fountain pen with an explosive attached to it. And if you were to kick that can, it would explode and blow your foot off. If you were to pick that pen up, it would explode and blow your hand off. So General Montgomery issued that order: “Keep your foot from evil, look right ahead; make level paths for your feet.”

And it always seemed to me that is so true of the Christian life. The devil has innumerable booby traps set in our path and if we just turn aside for one moment from the path that God has set before us we can find ourselves injured by one of the devil’s booby traps.

So look straight ahead, set your objective before you, walk in a right and level way. Do not be diverted. Do not be tempted by the devil’s booby traps. Don’t turn aside, because if you do, you may suffer great injury to yourself. That is advice from the Bible that has proved in experience.

—Derek Prince

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Materials used by kind permission of Derek Prince Ministries.