“The Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one” -2 Thessalonians 3:3 ESV
Every day we experience fear in one way or another. Whether it’s fear of the opinions of others, fear of the future, or fear of the ways of the world, we need comfort and faith.
No matter the situation we should focus on the protection God offers. Every day God gives us His goodness and love. Our hearts need comfort, and our hands need strength as we make space for God to fill.
I used to have fear anytime someone was talking about Satan. He always seemed to be very clever, too clever for me to handle. I have seen to many strong believers getting tempted and eventually falling away from what seemed to be God’s will for their life. I have seen the ways in which the world is tricked by his schemes. I wondered if I would ever be able to defeat this strong and clever enemy.
Sometimes Satan seems too strong to be defeated, too clever to outwit. And many are in his grasp. The Bible tells us that satan is the father of lies. In John 8:44 Jesus tells us, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
Let that sink in for a minute. Everything Satan tells us is a lie. He cannot speak full truth. Every thing he tells us is in opposition to God, who is the author of all truth. All of Satan’s whispers about his strength and our inability to defeat him are in opposition of the word of God. We will find blissful freedom in God’s powerful words of a loving, truthful, Heavenly Father. However, we must allow God’s Spirit (the Holy Spirit) to come in and correct the lies of the enemy we have believed so we can walk in the abundant life that is available to us through Jesus.
Our heavenly Father is a perfect, capable protector from Satan. He promises to establish us and guard us. He is always with us and always knows exactly what we need to withstand the temptation of satan.
1 Corinthians 10:13 teaches us, “No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This means God promises never to let us face a temptation we cannot resist. Satan does not have the power to force anyone to sin or overpower a person’s free will. His primary weapon is deception. Satan relies on temptation, trickery, and false ideas to get people to cooperate with him. Satan only wins when a person chooses to believe his lies and gives in to the temptation.
Satan lives to whisper our past failures back to us. But our past doesn’t have to dictate our future. In fact, if we allow the Holy Spirit to use our past failures to reveal to us ways He has longed to lead us away from temptation, past sins can become stepping stones on which we achieve future victories.
Titus 2 11-14 says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age.” God’s grace is the foundation for our victory over the enemy, not our own works. It was in His grace that Jesus died to set us free from this world and restore us to God. His grace leads us away from temptation. And it’s His grace that He offers us every time we confess our sins to Him. God’s grace is powerful, freeing, perfect, and full of love. He knows our weaknesses. He knows our frame. But He is also perfectly capable of being strong in our weakness if we allow Him to be.
God has a perfect plan for every temptation that comes our way. The enemy is not stronger than us. He is not more clever than us. And he will not have victory over us because we have God, and God has defeated Him Our great protector and guard is a very god who defeated Satan at the Cross and will throw him into a lake of fire, resulting in his ultimate destruction. If we have chosen God to be our savior, he lives on the inside of us, has grace for us, and plans to use our past failure and current weaknesses to powerfully defeat our enemy -Satan. I hate my.
