Puzzles, Prayers and the Battle with Satan

The chorus “…our God is an awesome God…” is not just good to sing, it is the truth. Too often, we take that awesomeness for granted.

Photo By : Bludgeoner86 (Creative Commons)

I know I do.

The way He reveals His truths is, at times, a bit overwhelming.  Did I say “a bit?”

Recently, I was looking at Ephesians 6:11 in the NLT and it tells us to “…stand firm against all strategies of the devil.” The NIV says, “take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

To me, the key words in both scriptures are “strategies” and “schemes.”

A scheme is defined by Dictionary.com as an “underhanded plot; intrigue.”

A “strategy” is a well thought out plan of attack. When do we read about attacks – in most cases?

When you’re in a war.

And we all know we are in a  war.

Well, we all know how the war turns out. Satan loses

And while we know the ultimate victory will be ours because Jesus has already won the war, there are still going to be battles that we have to fight every day.

Satan knows exactly how, where and when to attack us. He knows he has a pretty good shot at breaking us down – collapsing our defenses. He knows that we’re much easier to discourage than attacking Jesus directly.

He also knows that if he beats up those of us that claim to follow Christ enough he increases his chances at keeping us from being effective in ministering and converting people that do not have a relationship Him, yet.

His biggest hope is that we, instead of turning to God to fight for us, will try to rely “…on our own understanding…” and fight him alone. When we do that, he usually wins.

By spending time in God’s word we discover, as I have, that overtime the attacks will have less affect on you as you learn more of God’s plan and will.  As we plant more of God’s word in and on our heart we’ll be much stronger in our walks and be better prepared for the next battle.

Now, attacks may increase in number and intensity but with time spent in the word, you’ll begin to recognize that these attacks are not as penetrating as they used to be.

1 Peter 3:9 says “Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate when people insult you…” after all, they are only words. They may sting a bit but they cannot do any more damage than we allow.

Remember when you were a kid and you used to recite the “I am rubber you are glue”? The idea is the same.

When we spend enough time in God’s word we can begin to pull back from looking at our lives day by day and start looking at the BIG picture. We can just begin to see our lives as a puzzle.

Slowly we should be able to see where God has placed some of the pieces already, certainly not all the pieces ‘cos he ain’t done with us, yet.

Where do you think God is in putting together the puzzle of you?