Satan Is One Step Ahead of You

I remember that whenever I wanted my husband’s son to visit us, I would tempt him with a food I knew he liked, and it always worked out just as I had expected

. I also bargained with my son. I did not call it blackmail, because that is an ugly word, but I told him I would do something in exchange for getting something from him. I used something that tempted them to get what I wanted. Why did it work? Because I knew their weak points, and it was very easy for me to win the battle by attacking where they were most vulnerable.

In our Christian life, we face a first-rate negotiator: someone who knows our character, our tastes, our weaknesses, the things we easily give in to, and which of our senses is most susceptible. Of course, he is an expert in the law, but he does not use it for good. He uses it to manipulate us as he pleases, so that we break it and have to be imprisoned.

It is sad to return to prison after being set free. Christ paid our bail with His blood, and thanks to mercy and grace, today we are called legitimate children. This, of course, does not please Satan, and in fact he has an advantage over us in some ways. While you go day after day without opening the Bible because you cannot find the time, he has had millennia to memorize it. He used it to try to deceive Jesus when He was hungry in the wilderness. Any one of us would have succumbed to temptation! Not Jesus. He stood firm in His faith and in His Father-Son relationship.

Satan can recite Scripture to you, but he will try to convince you that it can be changed and that what God revealed to you is not as you understood it. He will put doubts in your mind, downplay the consequences of a sin, make you feel sorry for yourself, and lead you to think that you deserve a little happiness in the way of the world—a happiness that ultimately leads you to spiritual misery.

When we neglect our prayer life and our relationship with God, we grow weak. We become a breeding ground for the germs of sin. They cannot live in holiness, but when we allow any filth into the space that should be occupied by God alone, we weaken our immunity and leave ourselves open to attack.

David said: How I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Ps. 119:97 Do you think the devil would stand a chance against us if we lived this way? If we live under God’s shadow, the sun will not burn us. There is a saying: “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” When David decided to take a few days off while his men were in battle, disaster struck: he fornicated with Bathsheba, which made him guilty of adultery, and he murdered Uriah. Clearly, at that moment he was not meditating on the law. Had he been, he would not have conceived the sin.

Let us always remember that Satan’s advantage over us is destroyed through our relationship with God. Let us not turn a deaf ear when a fellow believer points something out to us. God uses them to warn us that something is wrong in our spiritual life. Those around us are not always prying into our lives; sometimes they are the alarm that warns us to step away from the abyss.

The key word is flee. Do not confront it; you are not strong enough to do so. Do not flirt with sin. God shouts “No!” to us, but we are capable of dressing sin up until we see it as beautiful, sublime, and even believe it comes from Him. That is disastrous. The Word warns us in 1 Corinthians 10:12: “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.”

Run your race and assess the obstacles, but do not veer to the right or to the left. Let nothing distract you. Always remember: Satan has an advantage over you.