One of Satan's greatest tactics, is to make Christians too busy for prayer. Many say their 'morning prayer' and then their 'evening prayer', but, it is the in between times that Satan uses to HIS advantage. For unlike God, Satan does not have our wellbeing as his focus. No! Satan has our destruction as his sole purpose and reason for being. How many times have we all decided to spend more time in prayer only to find ourselves under siege with this or that crisis, or other sundry incidents to try and dissuade us from our course? This is where we must maintain our focus and our perseverance to listen to the promptings of The Holy Spirit. For at times God allows these distractions, in order to strengthen our resolve.
Another tool of Satan, is to tempt us to think that every adversity that strikes us is from him and not God. Thereby empowering the father of lies as if he were in control of our lives and not our All Powerful God. This can lead to a falling away of the Faithful when they attribute every difficulty to the Evil One, as they struggle to maintain their hope in the face of overwhelming anguish and pain. This is when feelings of hopelessness and despair will soon turn to resentment of our Loving God in our non awareness that God will strengthen that which is weakest in our spiritual life.
The mistake that many Christians make is believing that God is only interested in our temporal wellbeing. We fail to see that our Heavenly Father seeks to fill us with every good thing needed for our spiritual enlightenment, irrespective of our personal comfort. For The Triune Spirit is not reduced to supplying us with the luxuries of life we think we need in order to be happy.
The next trick Satan tries, is to distort our way of thinking, by using and abusing language for his purpose where one can no longer say evil is evil, in case a group of people find it offensive. Are we here to please people or God? In every ancient culture, the society was destroyed when what IS evil became distorted into a perceived 'truth', thereby enabling people to indulge in every base desire as if it were normal!
In order to be able to distinguish what is from God, and what is from Satan, much discernment is needed, but, we must also make sure of who is enlightening our hearts. This goes far beyond our own intellect and we need the support of a good Spiritual Director, who under guidance from The Holy Spirit, will discern what spirit is the motivating source. We must ensure that we do not follow the promptings of our own intellect, with the erroneous thought that we have the 'Gift of Discernment', and like a rudderless ship we start on a course of self destruction, by accusing others falsely.
Satan likes nothing better than to confuse our thoughts, and like a toy we become his plaything when we engage in a one on one battle with the Great Deceiver and Corrupter of souls. For the first mistake Eve made in the Garden of Eden, was to listen to the evil one, her next mistake was in conversing with the Serpent, and in those two actions, Pride got a foothold which led to the Fall.
Remember the tactics of the evil one and always resort to prayer, for it is prayer that is our greatest weapon, and Satan is left in impotent rage!
Peace of Christ to you ALL.
Copyright © 2005 Marie Smith. All rights reserved.
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