I’ve been wanting to talk about who Satan is
for a while now on my blog. I am just now getting around to it (how bad is
that? Maybe that was Satan?)
I am going through the book Passion Pursuit:
What kind of love are you making? By Linda Dillow and Julie Slattery which
talks about God and His purpose for your sexual life. It’s TOTALLY not what you
think and is probably the opposite of what you are thinking. But they go through the
Bible and talking about what does God say about sex and how should you, as a godly
wife, use God’s Word as tool for your sex life. I participated in this Bible study last year
and learned a lot. I am doing it again, but this time, I’m leading it with a
friend of mine. I feel like I’m learning a lot more this year.
One of the chapters talks about Satan and who he
is. It was so insightful that I wanted to share with you what I learned about Satan. I hope you stick around for both parts because in
order to know how to fight our enemy, we must know our enemy. If we choose not to know
our enemy, he will win every single time.
Do you know YOUR enemy? Do you understand him?
How do you envision him? To get a clear idea of who Satan really is, we have to
go back to scripture and see what it says.
John 8:44: You belong to your
father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a
murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in
him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the
father of lies.
We learn that Satan is a
murderer and has been so since the beginning. He does not hold onto ANY truth
because there is no truth in him. He is the father of all lies. No matter what
he says, it is a lie.
So what does Satan plan to do
with his lying tongue? Lets find out.
Matthew 4:1-3: Then
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
After fasting forty days and forty nights, he
was hungry. The tempter came to him
and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
1
Peter 5:8: Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil
prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Take
a minute and think about what you have just read. Who is Satan?
When
I look at these verses, I see Satan as a tempter, an accuser, and a prowling lion, wanting to
devour someone!
He’s
a powerful, lying, wicked, evil being that is out in our world prowling,
tempting, accusing, and causing distress and evil. And he has DECLARED war on
you, your marriage, your relationships, your finances, your blessings from God,
and everything about you!
Someone
has declared war on you! How are you going to defend yourself against such an
enemy?!
Before
I answer the question, and it might seem obvious on how to defeat Satan, I want
to point something out to you that I found from Passion Pursuit on page 67:
“Satan lies can sound friendly and even more comfortable than the truth… Lies
from the enemy settles down and take root in our own thoughts… The devious
schemes of the devil have become so familiar that they sound friendly and not
foreign… Each of us, based on personality and experience, are vulnerable to
unique lies of the enemy. He knows where you are weak.”
One
way the women who wrote this book puts it is that Satan takes truth and creates
half truths. He makes it look fluffy and if you’re not careful, you will take the
bait and allow him to influence you and your thought pattern.
How
immensely scary is this?!
Satan
knows the truth and will twist it just enough for you to believe it as truth.
Francis Frangipane said, “It is difficult to discern the areas of oppression in
our lives. After all, these are our thoughts, our attitudes, our perceptions –
we justify and defend our thoughts with the same intensity with which we
justify and defend ourselves.”
Satan
has INFILTRATED your thinking and has put perceptions, thoughts, and attitudes
in you so that God’s word will always stay on the page and will never make it
into your heart.
This
is where it all begins my friends. If Satan can infiltrate who you are as a
person and believe his lie from the get-go, you have just given him permission
to reside in your heart. And he even uses people – other Christians – to
put his lies into your head.
Our
battle with Satan begins and ends with our thoughts! Because whatever we think,
it will make it to our heart, and once it made its way down to our heart, then
our actions will start displaying that.
2
Corinthians 10:3-4 says, “For though we live in the world, we
do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight
with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power
to demolish strongholds.”
What
are strongholds? Passion Pursuit defines this on page 68 as “a demonic
stronghold is any type of thinking that exalts itself above the knowledge of
God, thereby giving the devil a secure place of influence in an individual’s
thought-life.”
Simple:
A demonic stronghold is when we rather believe a lie than the truth from God’s
word.
Let this sink in for a minute. As I end this part, look out for Part 2 as we'll learn how to defeat Satan and win.
But between now and
then, ask yourself these questions:
What
demonic stronghold do I have in my life?
What
lie am I believing?
What
areas am I vulnerable to Satan’s attack?
Be
in prayer and ask God to show you what power you have given Satan to. Ask God
to forgive you and to change the way you think about something. Go back to His
Word and memorize a verse that will help you strengthen your sword to fight
against Satan.
Remember,
God is by your side and when you have Him by your side, what do you have to be
afraid of?
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