Satan Exposed
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. I Peter 5:8
Satan leaves the clean prints of his character and presence everywhere he’s been. So why, after the powerful work of Jesus on the cross, the sending and indwelling of his Holy Spirit, the clear teaching about him by Jesus in Scripture, and the rapid spread of the gospel worldwide, have Satan’s victories over God’s people enjoyed such an incredible run?
The first part of the answer has to do with Satan’s powerful skills. He’s the master of redirecting suspicions about the points of origin and the person of origin, away from himself and onto others, onto circumstances, onto organizations, churches, bad doctrine, anything else but the real source. The second part of the answer lies with us and our indifference toward his person, abilities, and designs upon us. Indifference is synonymous with ignorance, and ignorance is synonymous with defeat. God himself says that ruin closely follows a lack of awareness. “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Satan likes it that way.
In contrast, God’s man in the character of his Lord is called to see what others cannot. Where others see only circumstances or people, we’re called to deploy our spiritual intuition, dust for prints, look at things from a different angle, shine the light in unusual places and ask deeper questions based on our knowledge of God’s Word. We should be able to see his character leaking into everyday situations. We might not see him strike the match but we know the fires he likes to set, how he likes to set them, what he uses to set them and even how he entices us to hold and strike the match.
Father, keep me knowledgeable, prepared and diligent in your Word.