BY GREG CRUM

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” I Peter 5:8

Here in I Peter we read an important note concerning both the strategy and authority of Satan, our ultimate enemy. We read that he is ever on the prowl, looking for prey, but we also see that he can’t “devour” whomever he wishes, whenever he wishes. How do we know this? That word “may” before the word “devour.”

“May” in this context is a word that denotes permission. We could read the ending of that verse as “seeking whom he has permission to devour.” Now, that begs the question, if the devil needs an “Okay” to devour individuals, who is giving him this permission? Is it God? Nope! It’s man.

In II Corinthians 2:11 we are told that the saints of old understood many of the strategies that the devil uses to gain an advantage over mankind. The early church was not ignorant of the ways the devil sought access into their lives. They knew full well that fear, strife, and sinful living all opened doors for him to gain entry and begin to wreak havoc in the lives of Christians.

I wonder, are we as aware of his methods as they were? In these last days we are living in we should be! We need to be more alert now than we have ever been as to how the enemy attacks, and understand what we need to do to best respond to those threats.

So, how can we be better prepared to fend off the attacks of our adversary the devil? Well, first, we need to understand that the devil is a spirit being, and as such he fights from the spiritual realm, but to gain access to this physical world, he tries to come through the door of our souls (minds, wills, emotions).

When you read your New Testament you realize that the devil has been defeated (past tense) on the spiritual front, but if he can get into our minds he can do much harm. That’s why you may have heard it said before that our battlefront with the enemy is the mind.

II Corinthians 10:3-5 gives us great insight into our fight with the devil in this life. There it speaks of “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” These “imaginations” are the lies of the devil that he brings to the door of our minds.

Think about what he did to Eve. That’s the same strategy he tries on us. He tells lies to get us to doubt the truth. He poses questions to get us to question God, and boy, is he persistent. He’s called Beelzebub, or “Lord of the Flies” for a reason. He tries to aggravate us with thoughts and suggestions contrary to God’s truth in the hope that, like Adam and Eve, we will eventually act on his lies and open the door for him to “devour” the good God has provided in our lives.

The constant barrage of mistruth has been key to Satan’s many victories down through the years, but there is at least one case in which he tried this and it was an epic failure. In Matthew 4 we read where the devil tried this same strategy on Jesus, but on that day it didn’t go too well for him! Why? Because Jesus responded the way we should—He talked back—He met the lie with the truth!

The devil came to Jesus three distinct times and did his best to twist the Word of God and gain entry into the mind and heart of Jesus. Jesus heard the devil’s “yakety yak” each time and he talked back. Jesus spoke the truth, the Word of God, right back into the enemy’s ear and slammed the door shut on that particular offensive.

Friends, to be successful against the devil we must counter his lies with the truth. When a lie comes to your mind, do what Jesus did: respond with the counterpunch of the absolute truth of God’s Word!

Greg Crum is the pastor of Calvary Temple in Lovely.