The devil’s biggest scam

We have a lot of myths in our heads. One of them is that the power of God and the power of evil are equal and opposite forces. The battle is so vicious that though God will win in the end, it’ll just be by a hair. This is a downright lie. Yes they are opposite, but there is nothing equal about them.

Another myth is that things of the devil are so evil and so scary that we should never speak of them for fear of invoking some sort of demonic curse. If someone has a pentagram on the bumper of their car, don’t even walk by their house. Watch a video on the paranormal, and then stay up all night afraid of every noise or shadow. Sure God is big and good and all that, but the devil… that’s serious stuff.

Without realizing it, professing Christians give respect to the devil, and yet have so little regard for the name of Jesus. Our Lord Jesus, whose name every knee has to bow before and every tongue confess.  

Ask yourself honestly how you’d react if you blundered into a satanic ritual and a curse was pronounced over you—would you be shaken by it? Would you run to church to pray extra hard to get rid of it? Or feel paranoid at every small sign that something weird might be happening to you? Would that horrible sight haunt you? But what were your reactions the last time you walked into the house of God and witnessed a meeting dedicated to God’s honor—were you shaken by it? When the pastor pronounced a blessing on you, did you feel a sense of awe and wonder that a supernatural thing had just happened? Did that blessing “haunt” you throughout your day? Did you wake up in the middle of the night remembering that the God of the universe had blessed you and that the most powerful name above all names had been invoked on your behalf? Were you expectantly looking for signs that God was really working according to what was said?

I know the answers most Christians would give if they were honest, and I’m not proud to say that I used to be just like them. This is a great scam of the devil, making himself out to be awesome and impressive, and God boring and ordinary. Just look at what’s popular on TV and movies—whatever is dark, twisted and perverse is always cooler and funnier. It’s become the subconscious default mindset of Christians in general. We know that the Bible teaches the opposite, but our reactions (or lack thereof) prove what we really believe.

So… what if we changed our default settings? What if we treated any curse or evil sent against us, from the distant past until now, as small and eradicated by our faith in Jesus? What if we act as if those hurtful words we grew up hearing were worthless lies? And then, what if we regarded every word of faith given to us as a priceless treasure? What if we consistently put into practice what we are taught from God’s word—even if we don’t understand it perfectly—with the eager expectation of a supernatural happening? What if we decide that we’re done with honoring and fearing the devil and dedicate more time to honoring and fearing God?  

What would happen is that we’d see God’s greatness begin to manifest more and more in our personal lives. We would find shortcuts through our problems because Satan’s scary smoke-and-mirrors games wouldn’t impress us any more. We’d be more joyful and be exercising our muscles of faith in the unseen, which in turn would please God more than we’d ever know. We can never forget that our God is huge, and our enemy is defeated and powerless against those who truly live by faith. It’s the truly living by faith part that we need to put into high gear.

“No weapon forged to be used against you will succeed; you will refute everyone who tries to accuse you. This is what the Lord will do for his servants – I will vindicate them,” says the Lord.  (Isaiah 54:17 HCSB)