Have you ever seen a cow-buntings nest?   No, probably not!  You can see the bird all over the place but you never see a nest.  The reason is the bunting doesn't make a nest. For whatever reason it doesn't care to nurture it's own.   It leaves it's eggs in other bird nests for the another bird to take care of.   What happens on the other end can be compared to our spiritual life.  If the mother bird who has her own infants to feed isn't careful, she will be feeding the imposter.  Her own infants will starve and be thrown out of the nest.  Most of the time birds feed the one whose mouth raises the highest.  If however, she noticed the bunting egg in her nest in time, she will build another nest over the previous one and the bunting egg will remain undeveloped.

So, is the way with our spiritual life.  Sometimes an imposter slips in and raises it's own self to demand to be fed.  We haven't seen it slip in so we aren't realizing, it is an imposter.  We haven't taken time to examine it so, we feed it and it grows, and develops, and suddenly. . . we have a full grown companion that we had never planned on having.  It is taking over our nest!  It becomes a part of us, robbing us from the spiritual growth we committed ourselves to.  Killing it off, once it has become a full grown companion is much more difficult.   It has become a part of us, a part of our family, familiar, we can even be bonded with it. . . (better yet in bondage by it).

How do we avoid this from happening?  How can we keep the enemy from slipping in when we are looking forward to nurturing and feeding what is rightfully ours (from our Creator!). We must fully understand that once we have committed ourselves and our lives to Christ, we know the enemy is going to attempt to place an impostor in "our nest".  The best thing we can do is block it's development from the beginning.   If the enemy has planted something in our nest today we need to build another nest on top of that one.  We do that by examing our lives daily, by keeping our accounts with God and others short!  By repentance - turning away from what the enemy may have slipped in today. 

It takes time with our Lord, in His Word, to recognize what is His and what belongs to the imposter.  It isn't as easy as people think,  the enemy isn't going to put something into our lives that isn't appealing, something that is so appalling to us we would reject it immediately.  It will look like our own "baby birds". . . like just another part of us needing to be fed.    We need to examine everything we let into our lives, test it by Scripture, submit it to prayer, watch it as it is growing, does it produce the fruit of the Spirit, or does it just keep demanding we feed it as we watch the rest of our nest starving and being cast aside.  If not careful, it will take over the nest.  Remember, it is not to late to stop and take inventory of what is in your nest!