God > Evil
There is so much evil in this world and sometimes it seems like no matter where we turn, the devil is after us as Christ followers. Have you ever felt like the closer you get to God, the harder life is for you? I have, too.
I picture the devil playing “hot & cold” with us … did you play that game as child? It’s where someone would call out “cold”, “warm” or “hot” depending how close you were to the target object, trying to lead you toward the pre-determined destination. I think the devil plays games with us – our minds and our hearts.
When we are far from God, the devil sees us as “cold” so he isn’t very concerned about us. In that proximity from God, we are already pretty consumed with living our life for ourselves, so we aren’t a threat to Satan’s evil plot. In essence we are already following the devil when we are not actively following Jesus. (Ouch!)
As we move closer to the Lord and get into that “warm” area, the devil takes notice of us and often this is when he starts his attack. His goal is to stop you from your move toward the Light and will bring back untrue and unhealthy labels to our minds, and tell us that we have no worth or value. He will remind us of the hurt we endured and try to persuade us that forgiveness of others is not required. He will encourage us to do what feels good and what makes us happy because our time on earth is short and he is full of reasons why we deserve to be happy regardless of the cost to our eternity.
Eventually when we gloriously reach the “hot” (and on fire 🔥) closeness to the Lord, the devil’s fire alarms at Station 666 sound loudly, and he goes into full attack mode. The devil is now ruthless in his motives and will attack our integrity along with our confidence in who we are as a person and in Christ. He will stir up drama and trauma within our family and workplace, stopping at nothing to cause us to doubt God and His goodness. Satan will turn a joyous time of us drawing near to our Savior and attempt to turn it into dark days filled with depression, discouragement and disbelief. His goal is for us to fully question God and blame Him for these terrible tragedies. Worst of all, Satan will tell us God doesn’t even want us as His child and these bad circumstances are His way of telling us to take a hike.
Nothing. The. Devil. Says. Is. True.
The devil is an evil being, rejected and cast out of God’s Kingdom. Nothing he says is for good, so we can’t listen to him, believe a word he says or give him power within us. However, we do need to study his ways in order to know our enemy and know that he does have extreme power.
Here are the methods I use when the going gets tough …
- Anything that does not align with God’s Word is not true or right. This is where spending time reading the Bible every day (all day, if needed) is crucial to know what God says about everything we deal with on a daily basis. The Book was written a very long time ago, but that doesn’t make the truths aged.
- Confusion about #1 comes from the Devil. Don’t be persuaded otherwise by anyone, for any reason. Fact check!
- Following Jesus does not exclude us from trouble. In fact, our walk of faith is what makes us a target, but we should consider it an honor to be attacked for our faith as it means we are on the right track for God’s purposes.
- Prayer changes everything. There is nothing more powerful than talking with the Creator of the universe and how blessed are we to be invited into a personal relationship with Him. If He can breathe our planet and everything in it into existence, He certainly can change our circumstances today.
If you are feeling emotionally broken down and spiritually exhausted, just keep following Jesus because you’re actually being called closer to your true purpose.
