Could It Be Satan?

Never a big fan of Saturday Night Live, I only occasionally watched the program in its early days. A lot of great comedians and characters came out of that show, though, and I thought it funny one day when a co-worker in ministry at my church dubbed me "The Church Lady." Although we no longer serve together, he still teases me with that nickname when we do happen to bump into one another at a pot luck dinner.







Although the SNL "Church Lady" skits were often bawdy and sacrilegious, I couldn't help but laugh when Dana would turn to the camera, crinkle up his mouth, and ask, "Could it be...Satan?" Given what a lot of us have been through lately that is a very good question to ask.



Last weekend two of my Sunday school members, one of them a pastor in our church, were taken by ambulance to the hospital on a critical day in the life of our church. Others in our class had felt extreme oppression the week before. Even I was seriously out of sorts, constantly angry but without good reason to be. After the Sunday morning service, several of us wondered, "Could it be Satan?" We all agreed that it was.



Satan knows that Jesus is coming back and that his time on this earth is short. If he is going to keep the lost away from the Cross and the salvation of Christ, then he will stop at nothing to distract us from fulfilling God's purposes in our ministries, places of work, and our families. I have long felt that much of the rebellion we see in our children is nothing less than the enemy's attempt to keep the next generation of believers from ever reaching the point of salvation or reaching their peers for Christ.  Lest you doubt it, Satan is alive and well and working on planet earth to do all in his power (and make no mistake, he is powerful) to see that no one comes to a saving knowledge of Christ and that those of us who do, live as defeated, ineffective Christians.



Since the beginning of time, literally, our enemy has been busy trying to lure God's children away from the truth of God's Word and the peace and joy of walking in obedience, always presenting an attractive counterfeit to tempt us to believe that our sin isn't really all that bad. Yet he knows that every sin we commit drives a wedge between us and Jesus, and he is hell-bent on making sure that none of God's children enjoy the intimate relationship that Christ offers us.



Many of us face serious illness, loss, and financial struggles in the course of living daily in a fallen world. It is when we begin to feel the weight of oppression in our circumstances and sense that there is something bigger at work than ordinary illness or adversity that we come to realize that we may well be under the attack of our enemy. But faint not! Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father interceding for the protection of his own from the enemy (John 17:9, 15).



Jesus tells us, "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy" (Luke 10:19). No matter how closely you may walk with the Savior, know that Satan will do all in his power to steal, kill, and destroy any evidence of Christ in you. But as a saved child of God you can rest in this blessed assurance from Christ himself: "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:28). Not even Satan!







Copyright © 2012 by Dee Dee Wike. All rights reserved. www.deedeewike.com





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Dee Dee Wike

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