Satan's Activities & Christianity

I was reading a sermon yesterday from a very well known Pastor. He first came to my attention a few years ago when I found one of his sermons on surrender, so once in a while I will check him out. Yesterday I decided to read one of his sermons─by the way I am a sermon freak, my favorite pass time is between my Bible and listening to sermons─it did not take me long to be disappointed. I could not understand how this pastor managed to take the subject in question and put a slant on it in this way. The whole sermon which was about six pages, was filled with examples of how Satan tempts us to make us feel we are not good Christians, he whispers words in our ears to cause us to be depressed by telling us things like we are not growing, he makes us doubts ourselves and so on. What made the sermon reeks was the fact that it was for people who on the outside appeared to be seasoned Christians. But I was to some extend relieved to see that the sermon was written in 1999 and I know for sure this pastor has grown so much more in the Lord.

The truth is that Satan is relentless, he is a coward, he is annoying, he has no shame, he is a liar, he is a trickster, he is a pest, he has audacity, you name it and Satan is it. But a lot of time we accuse Satan and it is not even his doing, it is our own. Very often we are so busy accusing Satan, we do not even stop to examine ourselves from God’s perspective to understand what is happening to us might not have anything to do with Satan but God,  trying to shake us up out of our lethargy. I learned the difference, through a vision I had in the middle of a worship service; the Holy Spirit showed me in a vision, the difference between living in Him and living outside of Him. It was amazing to see Satan sitting there as if he was waiting for me, but he also knew he no longer had access to me as long as I was in Him. Since that day, I learned to see Satan for who he is and I learned to see myself according to my identity in Him and I stop being afraid of Satan as well. As I exited the vision, I came out of it totally equipped with new power and new authority over Satan and I also understood he was more afraid of me than I was of him. Through the vision that lasted about five minutes I got so much out of it that it might have taken me years to learn.

I also learned how we misunderstand Satan’s work, and how much we waste time chasing after Satan when often, the problem lies with us. Make no mistake about what I am saying, Satan is extremely powerful, the meanest, the most egotistical and merciless being that ever existed. But, when it comes to true Christians, Satan is like a tiger with no teeth and not even paws to scratch us.  That brothers and sisters is the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. MY LORD, THE MASTER OF MY LIFE, MY SAVIOR, MY REDEEMER, & MY ALL!  As I learned to stop seeing Satan at every corner and learned to focus on my walk with Him I realized many times we attribute those things that come to mind about our Christian walk, they are not Satan’s doing. Often it’s about the darkness of our own hearts. Sometimes it is also God’s way of trying to reach us to help us because we are not walking with Him the way we should. While we are taught to attribute and dismiss those kinds of thoughts to Satan, I have learned to turn it around. I reasoned with myself in this way: If indeed the God I serve is stronger than Satan, if indeed my true goal with all my heart is to find Him by any means, then I have nothing to fear. I learned to stop for a while and examined in the light what has been attributed to the devil whispers and at the end of it, I found it was the Holy Spirit’s voice that was so far away, I was not used to it. It was muffled through all my misunderstanding, my busy mind, my head knowledge etc.

When I stopped dismissing his 'accusations', my only goal was to confront him and let him know once and for all that I had a plan for my life which involved following hard after God, and he was not part of my agenda, so bark another tree. I found out two main things: one is that often, we confuse the devil and the Holy Spirit when we are not used to communicating with Him. It turns out there is a drastic difference between the Holy Spirit and the devil communication to us. Even when Satan’s disguises as the angel of light to dupe us, he still cannot match the Holy Spirit sweetness, subtlety, imprint,  godly peace and God’s Word.  The second thing was that, God was very concerned with the fact that I was not growing and I was not on schedule with His plan. Yes He was concerned with the fact that I have been a Christian for few years yet, my understanding and knowledge of Him did not exceed a new born baby’s stage walk.  So the voice that was telling me I was not right with Him was indeed the Holy Spirit’s voice trying to get my attention.

Should you fear Satan? Of course you should fear him with everything that you are. But understand that if you call yourself Christian, Satan’s power on you is the equivalent of who you are in Him. So, if you still live life like a Christian who is saved in his sin instead of being saved from sin, then, be very afraid of him. If you feel you are not ready to live under the light of God some part of you truly enjoys the dark, be very afraid of him. If you feel you are not ready to leave double mindedness behind, yes be very afraid of him. If you have been a Christian for a few decades now, yet you find yourself seeking for the truth, yes be very afraid of him, because you should have found the truth already so that you can start walking with Him. I guess I do not have to continue, you see where I am going with this. Everything we do to cover up our lack of wanting to go forward with Him, all the lies we tell ourselves to avoid the true Christian walk, we only fool ourselves not God, neither Satan.  We alone pay the price.

Satan is the father of lies, so he knows when we lie to ourselves to avoid true Christianity. While Satan cannot know what we are thinking he knows what occupies our days, he knows how much love we have for Him. He knows our excuses; he can see our pride, stubbornness, ignorance, arrogance, lack of obedience to Him, our self-willed and our resistance to the truth of God. He knows when we left the real path of Christianity to make up our own footprints, to find little shortcuts to reach Him, etc. I noticed there is a group of people in the Church who actually live in Satan’s den, yet they have no idea. These are the Christians who have been desensitized in their sin, Satan has subdued them. They are so deep in bondage, their consciences have been seared by their sins, yet they have that false assurance, and they are usually the first one to talk about God’s love as being the solution for everything, as if His love overrides the cross.  I know a couple which the Church felt was elder material, yet they could not understand why I have acquired that bad habit of letting people like Oswald Chambers, Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, J.C.Ryle, A. B. Simpson, Moody,  etc,  sucked me into looking for a deeper Christianity in Him. To top it all, I was told that I am missing the fact that Salvation is by grace and I am confused.

Try to be in my position for a minute or two, I am in front of these people, I can see so deep into them that they have never made it to experience true Christianity inwardly, along with their grown up children that are in the same boat as they are. The whole family is about superficiality and rituals. They also have years of missions under their belts and title in the Church to prove they understand things better than I. (All man made of course) How do you answer someone who just utters something so ridiculous, so stupid, so void of spirituality, so void of Christ and the Holy Spirit? The only thing that sustains this couple is the lie they tell themselves.

 It is painful to interact with them, because I sometimes hate the fact that I can see so clearly with the eyes of my heart that they are living in Satan’s den, yet they have no clue. They are so deep in there you can’t do anything to pull them out. They have called themselves Christians for so long, Satan has done such a great job of subduing them in bondage, and they have been desensitized they are no wiser. It is strange how this couple has no fear of Satan at all, when in reality they should be deeply disturbed.  This is also an example of Satan’s audacity and he will never stop trying, because I could see behind the stupidity of those words, Satan made a feeble attempt to reach me through them. 

The moral of the story is that the blood of the lamb has power beyond what we can dream of. We should not be looking for Satan in every corner, but we should be very careful when like fools or like some of today’s unbelievers we find we are not worrying about his existence at all. 

By the way, this is coming from someone who once believed the devil was  some kind of  myth and also a joke.  When I became a Christian, all of the sudden I acquired such a fear of the devil that it paralyzed my mind and walk with Him.