Yesterday we began looking at the individual who will oppress us and war against us in our minds. The purpose is to familiarize you with an opponent you will never visually see. It’s hard to prepare and equip oneself under those circumstances, so we must study and learn, rehearse and prepare the way Sun Tzu stated. Today, I want to go inside Satan’s methodology so you can better understand his tactics so you are not caught off guard. If you can’t see him coming, you must know what to be prepared for.
This may surprise you. Satan is clever, but he is not as creative as you might think. He aspired to be above God but did not have the capacity to create — only to emulate, and persuade. After all, he is a created being below Deity. He only imitates and plagiarizes God’s creativity. He uses the Father’s ideas and twists them to meet his immediate needs. However, he is a creature of habit, like most of us. He uses the same approaches over and over, because most people are gullible enough to listen and accept what they hear. Today I want to give you some examples of how he manipulates our society:
- He uses Scripture out of context, deceiving and distracting those who will listen.
- He uses doctrines and interpretations of Scripture to cause disharmony between committed believers.
- He inflicts pain on the Father by persecuting those in whom The Father has placed his image (It would be like burning the Father in effigy);
- He makes us feel as if the Son’s death were not sufficient to pay for our sin because our sin is worse than other people’s sin (symbolizing Christ being re-crucified)
- He uses moral relativism to grieve the Spirit when we hold others to the highest standards but never hold ourselves to that standard (We see this most often in the form of rationalization and legalism, the source of denominational differences).
- He promotes atheism as an absolute;
- He intertwines truth with lies to make those lies more palatable (He uses the truth selectively to create a more persuasive context);
- He removes references to God in our society (through legislation) so there become no absolutes, and thus no sin, consequences, afterlife, accountability, or hope;
- He instills the belief that sin is often fun and that it holds the promise of happiness;
- He persuades us to form our identity through our professions and possessions (rather than in Christ), and using them as a scorecard;
- He makes us believe that bowing on our knees cannot help us understand our position as beloved children in relationship to God;
- He makes us believe that prayer is not an act of battle simultaneously fought in our minds as well as the spiritual realm while we parent our children and work in society;
- He makes us believe that when another counterfeit faith is exposed, it proves our thoughts as the basis of true faith.
Tomorrow we are going to look at some other antics of Satan. I want you to see how he will play with egos and personalities to get us to where he wants us – in a constant state of stress and temptation, knowing that eventually the best of us will cave in. I want you to know that does NOT need to be the result – we have an option because we have divine insight (1Corinthinas 2:14).
Love, Dad