Spiritual Warfare, Part 3

Satan & His Schemes

Hold to Christ’s Teaching

Walk in His Protection

Live in His Blessing

To Win the Spiritual War, One Needs to Understand Satan & His Schemes*

When experienced business owners want to improve their strength, profit, and growth, emerging from the rivalry with their competitors as industry leaders, they study the strategies of their competitors and analyze the industry forces impacting their company’s ability to grow and thrive. Once they understand the impact of those industry forces they can develop a strategic plan to outwit the competition.

In like manner, if you want to outwit the forces of darkness and defeat them, you must first understand their strategies and schemes and be prepared to defend yourself against their attacks. These schemes are designed to keep you from experiencing the “full life” Jesus wants for you, and to stop you from participating in the advancement of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Christ’s followers and Satan

Pastor Shafer Parker of Hawkwood Baptist Fellowship in Canada says, “When you believed in Jesus, you received eternal life. Your sins were forgiven. God became your Father in the fullest sense of the term. Heaven became your home and your ultimate destination. The Holy Spirit of God took up residence in your heart and became your ever-present Companion (and Counselor). The people of God became your forever family, along with God the Father and Christ the Son… But along with those benefits, you also got noticed by the enemy.”

“You see, if you belong to Jesus, the devil wants to make certain that as many Christians as possible remain as ineffective as possible.” Further, the moment you become a child of God, Satan and the forces of evil are trying to keep you from obeying Him, keep you from maturing (growing up) spiritually, and keep you from building the Kingdom of God on earth (referred to in Christianity as The Great Commission).

Pastor Parker reminds Christians “We believe in a personal God. That is, we believe God can be known in the same way we know one another. He hears us when we pray and He cares about what we have to say. He thinks of us individually and has plans for each one of us.” Then Pastor Parker discusses one of the most profound insights into reality I have ever encountered: “The Bible also teaches that a personality lies behind the evil in this world. The devil is as real as God, although he is not the same as God…he, like us and like all the angels, is a created being, dependent on God for his continued existence.”

“But for all that, never forget Satan is also a personal being. He communicates with us, and after a fashion…he can develop special strategies for individuals. There are people in which he takes special interest. And he is constantly seeking out those whom he can devour, metaphorically speaking.” As I look back over my life, I now see how Satan has used a series of strategies throughout my entire life to keep me from becoming a child of God, and to derail my spiritual growth and blessings after I became His child. Those strategies created disruptions to undermine my Spiritual growth and desire to help build the Kingdom of God. I suspect that you will see the same if you look back on your life as well.

The children of God collectively (referred to in the Bible as the “Body of Christ”) are God’s presence on earth. Satan is at war with Him. Therefore, it stands to reason that if we, are a member of God’s family, Satan is at war with us! Why? Because the Body of Christ is His physical presence on earth! The Lord Jesus Christ makes this sobering reality clear, “The thief [the devil] comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” (John 10:10)

However, Ephesians 6 teaches we can be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power by putting on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand against the devil’s schemes.

Satan’s Schemes & Strategies

As a strategic business planner, I was intrigued by Paul’s statement that Satan has strategies. After studying his strategies and looking back over my life, I can see where he has used them to make me ineffective and disobedient at times. It has been one of my missions in life to discover his strategies and expose them to the Body of Christ. The devil has several schemes that he employs. Based on my research, the following appear to be Satan’s core strategies:

He makes you fearful of sharing or serving Christ (2 Timothy 1:7).
He lies to you by questioning God’s truth (Genesis 3:1).
He lies, sometimes mixing lies with truth, to persuade you to disobey God (Genesis 3:4-7).
He manipulates you until your love for seeking the desires of your heart is greater than your love for seeking God (Matthew 22:37).
He uses a divide-and-conquer strategy. He gets you to battle people rather than fighting against him and the spiritual forces of darkness (Ephesians 6:12).
He exploits your weaknesses by tempting you with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16).
He masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Consider the following ways the devil tempted Christ, even using Scripture to try to manipulate him with “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and pride of life.” NOTE that Satan also has the power on earth to bless you, but Jesus disregarded Satan’s temptations and instead kept His faith and trust in God!

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them, He was hungry. The devil said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Man shall not live on bread alone.”‘

“The devil led Him up to a high place and showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to Him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If You worship me, it will all be Yours.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.”‘

“The devil led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If You are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw Yourself down from here. For it is written: “He will command His angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”‘ Jesus answered, ‘It is said: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”‘ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:1-13).

Key Schemes of Satan, “The Father of Lies.”

Following are some of the key schemes Satan uses to accomplish his objectives through pleasures or fears:

• He lies, making his lies appear to be reality. “He (Satan) was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Satan himself “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real

• He wants you to disobey God because all of God’s blessings and rewards are tied to obedience: “Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love them, and We will come to them and make Our home with them” (John 14:23). Deuteronomy 28:2, “All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God.” Many other promises in Scripture are tied to our obedience. See Genesis 2:15-17, Deuteronomy 6-8, 28 and 30, Psalm 1, and John 14:21 and 15:10 to name a few.

• He lies about God, leading people to believe that there are other gods that are equal to Him in power and/or authority. But there is only one God: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4). And He does not share power: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

• He lies about the path to God, leading people to believe there are multiple ways to be united in fellowship with God. However, the Bible makes it clear there is only one path to God, as seen in 1 Timothy 2:5 above and Jesus speaking in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

• He mixes truth and lies to confuse, manipulate, and tempt you as he did in the beginning with Eve in Genesis 3:4-5, “You will not certainly die…For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” As it turns out, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened (God knew this was not good for them). But, Adam and Eve did die – both physically and spiritually, creating the monumental changes for mankind discussed in Genesis chapters 1-2.

• He uses accusations, creating false guilt to keep us down. A clue to one of his schemes is his name, Satan, which means adversary or diabolos (translated devil), which means accuser.

• He will battle to keep the souls of non-Christians by making them feel like they are not “good enough” to come to God. He tells people lies about God so they will not trust Him. He manipulates people to put off inviting Christ into their lives. By using these strategies, he starts people on a fruitless mission (because a person can only become “good enough” through the power of God’s Spirit in them, which only happens once they put their faith in Christ and invite Him into their life).

• He will make Christians feel inadequate or like a failure in their Christian walk, discouraging them from growing spiritually and/or diminishing or eliminating their Kingdom effectiveness:

Satan does his best to find something he can make us feel guilty about because he knows a Christian who feels guilty will become discouraged and ineffective.
Satan uses accusations to destroy relationships, trust, and unity in families, The Church – the Body of Christ, or any other group of Christians trying to work together.
Satan will jump at any opportunity from our slip-ups to convince us to focus on our guilt instead of Christ’s redeeming work of grace at the cross.

• He will work at keeping our eyes off Jesus every day. Satan will lead us astray for as long as it takes for us to:

Question God’s love and faithfulness;
Believe we can sin without consequences because of God’s grace; and/or
Become a slave to the “sinful nature” again.

• Satan uses fear to manipulate us. Or to destroy us! “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV). “But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved” (Hebrews 10:39). Thankfully, God loves us. “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:16-18).

Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development.

• One of his very powerful strategies is to try to overwhelm you by appealing to the flesh. “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31- 32). Satan will use “flaming arrows” with temptations to attack your infirmities (weaknesses in the flesh), such as addictions of all kinds including alcohol, drugs, food, tobacco, sex, homosexuality, money, people, things, activity, power, etc.

• Satan will use rationalization to move you out from under the protection of God through disobedience. For example, Christ commanded Christians to love one another. Yet, millions violate the principles of Psalm 15 daily. “Lord, who may dwell in Your sacred tent? Who may live on Your holy mountain? The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart; whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others; who despises a vile person but honors those who fear the Lord; who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind; who lends money to the poor without interest; who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken.”

• He will trap you in busyness and the worries of this world, when you put too much trust in your talents, and/or making money. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; “but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful” in your spiritual life (Mark 4:13-20).

• One of Satan’s most effective strategies is discouragement. For those who might be thinking that I am over-concentrating on Satan and His impact on the lives of Christians, consider these shocking statistics from research of pastors distilled by Schaeffer Institute and that of Barna, Focus on the Family, and Fuller Seminary:

“Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.
Eighty percent of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could but have no other way of making a living.
Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.”

Key Insights to Overcome Satan and his Forces of Darkness

Pastor Shafer Parker discusses some powerful insights into what it means to be found standing when the battles are over:

“All battles are spiritual battles. Moses, Joshua, David, Jesus – all their battles were won first in the realm of the spirit.
All battles are won or lost on the battlefield of the soul. From heaven’s point of view, instant defeat accompanies any compromise of righteousness, no matter how small.
In every battle, the real prize is the maintenance of your soul. “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
There is no victory apart from a willingness to be emptied. How about Job? He was a winner in the cosmic struggle whose battle was won the moment he could say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21).
All victorious battles are fought by a combination of prayer, faith, scripture, and action. Strategy has little to do with it unless you are strategizing how best to glorify God. “For the battle is the Lord’s, and He will deliver you into our hand” (1 Samuel 17:47b NET).
All outcomes are decided by heaven’s standards, not earth’s. “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14).
No winner is declared until God finally releases His ruling on Judgment Day.”

The Bible will teach you how to be a winner and what the prize is!

“Then I saw a great white throne and Him Who was seated on it. …And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. …Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire…”

Revelation 20:11-15

Closing Comments

I know this is “heavy stuff,” but “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). “The One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

Consider examining your life, behavior, and faithfulness to Christ’s mission, to include making disciples…teaching them to obey everything He has commanded. Be realistic and honest about who and what it indicates you are putting your trust in.

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 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.”

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

Next, we will examine these spiritual weapons in future articles. Then you will know how to overcome the enemy’s schemes and be equipped to defeat him using the full armor of God. These articles will help you understand the Armor of God and how to “put it on.”

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