Troublesome Topic: SATAN USES OUR DESIRE FOR A GOOD REPUTATION AGAINST US

Satan has a well-developed knack for bringing together our desire to serve God and our fleshly desire for comfort. He does this by making us feel good about whatever we are doing for God without being willing to do any more for God, so he tells us we are giving enough. He wants us to be passive Christians who say, “I’m okay right where I’m at;” “I’m doing enough already.”

Satan is deathly afraid of the believers who have a hunger for God that cannot be satiated, a passion for spiritual vitality that drives their every action, and a love for Jesus that is contagious. He will do everything in his power to avoid having us become an on-fire, give-it-your-all Christian.

The first step in getting one of God’s servants to slide backward is to get him to stop moving forward.

Therefore, Satan tries to get us focused on what others think about us, rather than what God thinks of us. If we start focusing on the opinions of others, Satan has a wide variety of tools he can use against us, one of which will likely prove effective in our downfall. He can get us to pretend and just play games (like the “churchianity” game), or compare ourselves with others and thus convince ourselves that we are “okay.” We may look at others and get discouraged and want to quit, or we may become proud because those other people just can’t measure up like we do. We may see the flaws of others and wonder why we are trying so hard.

Any way you slice this thing, it is a bad idea to focus on our reputation in the eyes of others. Our lives should be lived as a symphony played for an audience of One. What God thinks of us is the only thing that matters.

Satan Tells Us We Are Normal

Most of all he makes us feel like our brand of the Christian life is “normal.” So if someone does not live up to our standards they are a pathetic excuse for a Christian, but if someone is going deeper and doing more than we are, he is radical and crazy. We buy this message quite easily because the only eyes we have through which we can look at things are our own. Thus what we see from our perspective must be normal and everything else strange.

But God is the one who should determine what is normal for His children. It does not matter what we think is normal; the real question is: “What does God consider normal for His followers?”

Read the Gospels and see how strong some of Jesus’ saying are. He always called for complete commitment and total obedience. Read the epistles and see the attitudes Paul and Peter and John and James had toward commitment, sacrifice, and obedience. Read biographies of outstanding Christians down through history and be inspired by their service and encouraged by their mistakes. In these ways you can fill your mind with messages that will counter Satan’s message which claims you are okay just the way you are and you can stop pushing so hard.

Satan is crafty in the way he couches his messages. He tells us we are doing just fine, we don’t need to do any more to be a good Christian. He tells the “mature” ones, “You are doing enough, besides, the younger ones need a chance.” He tells the younger ones, “You need more experience first. So wait a few years until you’ve got your act together.”

The next lesson is Satan Uses Our Tomorrows against Us