Seeking to Devour

My last blog post was about fear. Something I have had to come face to face with since I was diagnosed with breast cancer on June 19th. We all know about fear.The thoughts that creep up on us that cause us to live in the What If? place. Fear is one of the tactics of the enemy of our soul. It is opposite of faith and when we are in fear, we are tormented in a sense by dark and unproductive thoughts. When we live in fear, we live like women who do not have a God of love caring for them. Satan, loves to keep us bound up in many things and fear is the wire he uses to wrap our minds up, keeping us bound to thoughts that block us from fully trusting our Abba Father. I have been learning to pay attention to those things that the enemy uses in my own life to distract me from faith, hope or love.

Relationships. Another area that the enemy seeks to ruin and destroy. If God’s plan was that we love one another, then the enemy works overtime to make sure that love is blocked and averted. Things can be fine and then out of nowhere they seem to take a turn. Communications are all mixed up, things bother me more than they should, little things appear to be big things. Perhaps you recognize what I am talking about. In the middle of it all we begin to assign blame for our feelings of discomfort on a person, a situation, a decision we had no control of. We squirm in our own heads and are not exactly sure what’s going on. Welcome to spiritual warfare. Your life, it’s people and it’s situations are not the enemy. The fight that you feel inside is something more. Without paying attention to the something more we can get lost in assigning blame, fighting life battles in our own strength and ultimately frustrated because it seems we are “getting nowhere”.

Circumstances. They are never going to be perfect. But somehow the enemy of our soul keeps trying to lure us with…there is more…the grass is greener. As long as he can keep us discontent, he will win today’s war on our mind and emotions.

There are many things we don’t like to talk about. We don’t want to appear like the stereotypical crazy Christian. We don’t want to become fanatical or just plain ridiculous. In our attempt to fit in to our culture, we as Christians are sometimes guilty of covering up the truth about some very real aspects of the Christian life. In particular, most of us have no interest in talking about having an enemy, the devil. We much prefer to believe he is a cartoon character. I must warn you, the cartoon character is a lie, a myth a fable.

Here’s Truth:

“Be self controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” 1 Peter 5:8-9

Author Nancy McGuirk says, “When you hear the words red suit, pointed tail, horns and pitchfork, you think I’m describing the devil, right? Wrong. What I’m describing is the worlds caricature of the devil. The danger of seeing that image as a joke, which it is, is that we may also begin to think of Satan’s work as a joke, which it isn’t. Spiritual warfare is reality, not fantasy.”

Satan is given names in Scripture. These help define what he is all about. He is called the tempter ( Matt.4:1-11) the accuser ( Rev 12:7-11) murderer ( John 8:44) a roaring lion ( 1 Pet 5:8) the serpent ( Gen 3:1, Rev 12:9) the god of this age ( 2 Cor 4:4) and one disguised as an angel of light ( 2 Cor 11:13-15).

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.” 1 Cor 10:5

Resist the lion’s roar today. Stand firm. God is bigger. Jesus Christ overcame the enemy. We must stand firm with the Word of Truth and Prayer for God’s grace and strength.

Sometimes we act as our own enemy…more on “living in self” later, but for now, just be aware, informed, and standing in truth.

Don’t be fooled by lies of the culture. Be informed by the Holy Scriptures.

His,

Debbie