Day 23

Satan likes nothing more than to corrupt our faith..!
The evil one wants you to profess your faith in Christ with your mouth, but for your actions to contradict your faith..
From the Scriptures we know that the devil has a plan. He is up to something. He is very active. He is very persistent..
1) The devil wants you distracted.
It doesn’t matter what he has you distracted on as long as you aren’t focused on God first. Maybe he will even distract you with good things at first. He is fine with good things as long as they aren’t as good as the things you should be focused on. He doesn’t mind a slow erosion (the gradual destruction) of your focus. The devil wants to distract you from your Lord..
2) The devil wants your family.
Not only does he want families destroyed, but he wants to stop them before they even start. He wants to prevent the marriage by encouraging living together and degrading marriage to, “just a piece of paper.” He wants children aborted before they are born. He wants us to view kids as a burden instead of a blessing. And if the devil isn’t able to keep us from marriage and bearing children, he wants to destroy our marriages and hijack the minds and hearts of our spouse & children. He will use subtle things like unmet and unspoken expectations, selfishness, or budgets to put pressures on your marriage..
3) The devil wants you to profess your faith in Christ with your mouth, but for your actions to contradict Christianity.
If the devil gets you confident enough in your faith to profess it, but weak enough in your faith to not follow it, he has created a powerful weapon for his plan..
4) The devil wants you to be afraid.
The devil loves fear and he delights in it. When we are afraid we just want to drown out the thing that is causing the fear. We want to numb the pain. Fear can be crippling. And when you focus on fear, he is winning..
5) The devil wants it all.
He is greedy. He is selfish. Being a powerful angel in the Lord’s presence wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to be God. He will stop at nothing to take every good thing and destroy it. He is relentless and will go until he drains us of all good..
We need to submit and resist. Submit to God. No more trying to control our own lives and make our own decisions and write our own story. If He is Lord, submit to His authority. He will do a better job than you anyways..
Then we need to resist the devil. For too long we have tried to compromise with him, hoping that he would leave us alone. But in the end all we have done is feed the beast, let him grow, and now he wants more. His greed can never be satisfied and you cannot appease (satisfy/pacify) him by giving in. Resist him in the power and strength of the Lord, with the armor of God (Ephesians 6) and in unceasing prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17)
You are on a journey that only faith can handle – GOD will do a better job than you anyway..!!
“So submit to [the authority of] God. Resist the devil [stand firm against him] and he will flee from you.…..”(‭‭James‬ ‭4:7)