the enemy

 

 

I spent one of the most glorious weekends of 2015 (to date) in Spokane, relishing the delicious dry sunshine and distinctive scent of eastern Washington and the company of some of my favorite friends. On my way back I was overwhelmed with the glory of all the mountains standing crisp and white against an unbelievably blue sky—the Stewarts, the Cascades, and of course my beautiful Mt. Rainier. What a beautiful God we must have, if any part of Him is reflected in His creation!

I stopped in Ellensburg and had lunch with my brother, and we got to talking about the strategies of the Enemy, and how he might like us to think his deceitful voice is actually that of God, or at least similar in power. It took me back to Genesis 3 and perhaps the clearest example in Scripture of Satan’s tactics for driving a wedge between us and God, and as I was lying in bed last night (yay 11:00pm inspiration) this is the conclusion I drew:

The oldest strategy of the Enemy is, first, to make me question the goodness of God—to make me doubt His actual investment in my very best interests. It doesn’t seem to matter how much evidence of His love and blessing I have in my life; I only have to latch onto one small thing I don’t have, or one small thing I’m not, or one small thing He might be keeping from me in order to mentally defame Him in this way. The next step is simply to fill that place with something else, something “better”; this will come in the form of my own small “wisdom,” and the Enemy will be happy to point out an object for that wisdom, which will likely be something incredibly useful (The woman saw that the tree was good for food), something unbearably enticing (and that it was a delight to the eyes), and/or something that addictively makes me feel “good” about myself or my life in some way (and that the tree was desirable to make one wise).

I may feed myself this slow-spreading poison for days, weeks, or even years before I come to fully understand what eternal spiritual fruit and fulfillment I have sacrificed for the sake of a relatively momentary, gluttonous satisfaction. I may not even realize that a chasm is being formed between myself and God. Perhaps my chosen vice is not even inherently a bad thing, but I have used it for a purpose that either I or it was never intended for—simply because I allowed my foundational understanding of God’s character to be eroded by the cunning questions of the Adversary.