Spiritual Warfare 4

Resuming our quest for personal growth - Know God, Know self, know about the enemy (satan).
Our scouting report on satan continues with a summary of our findings regarding his strategy against Christians. As in basketball competition, a team can develop a strategy that often begins with a more passive zone or sagging man to man defense. It intensifies with aggressive half court pressure and reaches its ultimate force with a full court press.
So also with satan’s strategy in attacking the Christian. he tempts. If that doesn’t get the job done, he turns up the heat with flaming arrows. his ultimate weapon of pressure is entitled “overpowering.” Let’s examine the progression together and our counterattack with each.

Temptation: satan’s passive attack
Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. satan questioned Jesus’ identity (“if you are the son of God...”) and tempted Him in areas of normal human weakness and need: appetite, attention, power. The sinless Jesus, as God/man, met satan head on, giving him no ground for success.

Not being sinless, humans often yield to temptation. James 1:13-14
When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.
We all have natural needs to love and be loved, to feel worthwhile and significant, to have meaning in life. Nothing wrong with these God-given needs. But satan tempts us to short-circuit the meeting of these needs.

The search is on for someone to love us. We find him/her. We are loved. Life is great. Rejection occurs sooner or later. Loss. Pain. God gently whispers, “Look first to me for love. I want to meet that need. As I am your focus for love, I’ll secondarily bring another into your life.”

This concept came alive to me after I lost Ann, my wife of 36 years. Grief hit hard. Then came loneliness. I prayed, “God, in Philippians 4, you promise to meet all my needs. I have a great need for companionship and love. I don’t want to look to another person for that. I don’t want to date around. Will you be my companion - my wife, as it were?”

He did. He was. Then He connected me with a woman I had known 40 years previously, who lived across country. Too far to date. But e-mail and telephone provided us the opportunity to learn about each other in depth. Marriage followed and what a gift God has provided! First Himself. Then Himself along with Theresa.

Besides seeking love, we pursue feeling worthwhile and significant through some performance. We work hard. We invest life energy. We become successful. Then the bottom drops out. We lose the position. We’re not wanted anymore. Fired! Cut loose. Down sized. Replaced. Our kids rebel. God gently whispers, “Look to me for your worth, your sense of significance. I created you unique. You have great value in my eyes. Learn from me. Integrate that truth. You’ll seek my glory and not man’s. The pressure to perform is off.”
satan tempts us.

Our counterattack to satan’s temptation:
1 Take every thought into captivity.
2 Corinthians 10:5 admonishes: We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (Rebuke the whisperings of satan.)
2. Resist.
1 Peter 5:9. James 4:7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (“In the name of Jesus, flee, satan.”)
3. Attack with Scripture.
Luke 4:4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'" (Know Scripture well enough to combat the evil one with God’s Word.)
4. Don’t give him a foothold.
Ephesians 4:26-27 "In your anger do not sin" : Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. (Consistent sin in any area gives satan a foothold in that area.)
5. If yield to temptation, repent. Reinstall the breastplate of righteousness.
Ephesians 6:14 Stand firm then, ... with the breastplate of righteousness in place, (Thank you Father for your forgiveness of my sin. I reclaim my purity and holiness in you.)

A more passive attack by satan is temptation. If that strategy is ineffective, he turns up the
heat, he intensifies the assault with flaming arrows. We'll examine that in tomorrow's post.