He has the attitude of a lion, but the shrewdness of a snake. Satan is so much more intellectual than we give him credit for, yet he is a lot less powerful than we have made him out to be. He knows that the powers of darkness are no match for power of God. But do we? Somehow Satan has twisted the minds of Christians to be on full alert for a viscous attack, while he is carefully and quietly gnawing away at our faith without us even knowing. He has us glued to the hull of the ship, searching for storms off in the distance, while there are icebergs a few feet under the surface of the water right in front of us. We are on the lookout for the wrong kind of disaster. See, Satan doesn't do obvious attacks, because if we see him coming, we can call on Jesus and He will immediately protect us. But what if he is manipulating our thoughts so that we walk away from the will of God without even knowing it?
Satan is a manipulator.
When I was nineteen years old God called me to someday plant a church. After that happened, I immediately began to look up to power preaching, church planters. Most of which have had wild success at a very young age. I then assumed that since they planted at such a young age, and I seem to have similar giftings as the pastors that I looked up to, that I was supposed to plant a church at a young age. Therefore, I was consumed with the idea of planting a church at the age of twenty-five. I became obsessed with how cool the story would be of me planting a successful church at a young age, just like all the preachers I extolled. But my perspective was completely off. I let God determine my plan, but Satan determine my perspective. See, I wanted to plant a church because God told me to, but I wanted to do it when I was twenty-five because I thought it would be a cool story.
Satan is a distorter.
I was more concerned with my story than God’s glory. When our ultimate goal, and perspective in everything we do should be to glorify God. One of Satan’s greatest tactics is to get us to switch our motivation from glorifying God, to glorifying ourselves. And I nearly fell victim to it. He is constantly, yet subtly manipulating our thoughts, our motivations, and our perspective, so that we will begin to live for our story instead of God’s glory. He gets us to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. Now, I may still plant a church when I am in my twenties, but if I do it will be to expand the kingdom of God and glory His name. Not so that I have a cool Instagram bio.
Satan is a philosopher.
We’ve all heard the age-old, philosophical question on perspective, is the glass half empty or half full? I propose that the whole debate on pessimism vs. optimism that surrounds this question is a subtle scheme of Satan. See, I always thought that we can only look at the glass in two different ways: being half empty, or half full. When we look at it being half empty, that’s to say that we are looking at a situation from our earthly perspective and through our human eyes. When we look at the glass half full, we are looking at it from God’s Heavenly perspective, but through our human eyes. The problem with this is that Satan, with his subtle lies, has gotten us to look at everything in our lives at face value. And we have put limitations on a limitless God. When if we looked at the glass from God’s Heavenly perspective and God’s eyes, (instead of our eyes) we would see that the cup doesn’t have to be just half empty or half full, it can be overflowing. See we don’t serve a God of half full. We serve a God that fills our cup to overflowing. But Satan has subtly, yet successfully gotten us to think that it is okay to settle for a half full view of life, as long as we have an optimistic attitude.
Satan is subtle.
So here’s to not taking things at face value anymore. Here’s to living life for God’s glory instead of our story. Here’s no longer looking at life as half anything. Here’s to no longer putting limitations on a limitless God. Here’s to no longer letting the subtleties of Satan creep in and rule our minds.
Cheers.
