Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
There are times in the life of a believer when everything seems wrong. God seems lost to us and we fear for our souls. These are the moments when we may cry, as both David and the Son of David did, “my God, my God why have you forsaken me?” These are also the moments when our Adversary is close by, repeatedly telling us that we have forever cut ourselves off from the love and mercy of our Creator and Redeemer. There is no better liar than the “Father of lies” and it is easy in this world, his temporary domain, to believe what he so incessantly tells us about ourselves. There is perhaps no mission that the Enemy of the human race undertakes with more relish and energy than accusing Christians of not really being sons and daughters of the most high God.
Sometimes, though not always, believers truly have given Satan something to use against them during these times. We all continue to sin in thought and deed and this is the source of his most effective ammunition against us. Scripture tells us that if we confess our sin and forsake it God will forgive us through the shed blood of Christ. The enemy counters either by saying our sin is unforgivable or, alternatively, that it has been committed just one too many times. He wants us to believe that, beyond being guilty of sinning, we have also been permanently given over to sin. Because we know that God hates sin He tries to make us believe that God now hates us and all too often many of us believe him.
One of the best defenses against these accusations is to remind ourselves that the Devil is a deceiver. While he does use the truths of the word of God he does so in an ultimately untruthful way. No one can distort the Scriptures like him and no one is so effective at using them out of context. Every slick human propagandist throughout the centuries who has twisted the truth with evil intent is but a pale imitation of the Father of lies.
The good news is that we do not have to believe this ultimate liar. Lies are dependent on truth. They have no existence except in contrast to it and when a deeper revelation of truth is brought to our consciousness by the Spirit even the most subtle and convincing of them can be disarmed. God is truth and truth came first. It always prevails in the end because He always prevails in the end. If we choose, with God’s help, to consistently believe this the Devil will ultimately lose every battle against our souls fought in the realm of accusation. The truth embodied by the Lord’s continuing grace, love and forgiveness in the lives of His struggling children can counter the intent of Satan’s lies every time.
It is also vitally important that we remember that our enemy’s days are numbered. It may be that, in these end times, he is throwing everything he possibly can into his war against our souls because he senses that his own moment of destruction is coming. For this reason the Devil, for all his wiles and derived strength, is desperate. Even his greatest displays of power in this increasingly depraved world belie the inevitable and rapid approach of his fate. In the meantime our call is to stand on the truth of our Father’s Word. That Word assures us that the day is coming when the conquering Son of God will free us from Satan’s accusations forever by freeing us from Satan’s presence forever.
We need only to trust and hold on to this promise. Our all-conquering Lord will do the rest.