As I sat before the Lord early in the morning, I brought to him something in myself, a flaw, something that I perceived emanates from a root of fear. As I was speaking to him about it, the Scripture came into my mind, "perfect love casts out fear." (1st John 4:18) Meditating on the Word of God is crucial in creating a foundation for our lives, for our attitudes, for our responses. The surface meaning of a passage may not be sufficiently refined in our understanding, to produce the desired end in us. The Bible contains several words which are translated in English as "meditate." One of them, "sachat," means to squeeze out as grapes. And that's what I found myself doing that morning, squeezing out that verse, meditating on it prayerfully until the dross was cleared up and the new wine flowed. As I thought on the passage awhile I wondered, "then why do I still have fear if his love for me is perfect?" But first my attention was drawn to what it's NOT saying. The common interpretation of this verse has been that the perfect love of God casts fear out of us. But that's not what it's saying, or at least there is another way to look at it. It's not referring to God's love for us because if it were, all fear would be gone as soon as a person has been the recipient of his love which is perfect. No. It's talking about OUR love - for HIM! When we have walked with the Lord for awhile, as we grow in our experience of him, as we come to see his faithfulness and mature in the awareness of his active participation in our lives, that will bring about, if we let it, such a growth of trust in him, such a developing love for him, that it truly does cast out fear. So it's not that God's perfect love casts out fear, but that as our love for HIM becomes perfected, it casts out fear. I nearly jumped from my chair! I SAW it! In many years of walking with the Lord, we've been through some deep valleys together, through thorns and briars and through the fire. In all of these situations, the Lord has manifested himself to me and delivered me from all the troubles. Truly, truly can I say, "all things work together for the good to those who love God..." But the point is that as we see the Lord bring us through trials and deliver us, and help and provide for us, sometimes miraculously, we grow slowly and at times imperceptibly in a love for him which brings about a trust base that after awhile becomes a solid living foundation in our nature. Indeed he has told us that he gives us peace, but then defines it as a peace that the world is incapable of giving (John 14:27). As we experience him, we grow in the understanding of the nature of that kind of peace. Who, having experienced it, could ever explain it? So these things work together: learning trust through experiencing his constant provision and deliverance - and receiving his peace, which is of an entirely different nature than any other ever experienced. Thus we grow from experience to experience, and in all of our stories we can see - if we're trained to recognize them - the fingerprints of the Lord all over them, and we can't help but grow in a living and abiding love for him. When reading that morning, I realized that even in the light of all he has done there is still some fear that is hanging on for dear life. But it's chipped, and worn, and bedraggled, and tired, and just waiting to flee. And it will - because it has no possibility of survival in the presence of a love of God that is developing toward that "perfect love," which will finally cast away all fear!
"Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men,
was exceedingly angry, and he sent forth and put to death
all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts,
from two years old and under..."
Matthew 2:16
The whole intent of Satan is to oppose everything God does and to destroy everything that God loves. At the birth of Jesus, Satan moved upon king Herod's heart to murder all the male babies two years old and under in order to destroy the child who would grow up to be the Messiah. But God intervened and told Joseph to take Mary and the child to Egypt and to stay there until Herod was dead.
Just as we need to know our God, we also need to know our enemy. Satan is not "an evil force," he is a person, an angel who was cast out of heaven when he tried unsuccessfully to rise higher than God. He managed to get a third of the angels to follow him in his rebellion, and they were all defeated and thrown out of heaven. And now, Satan hates God with a pure hatred. He despises all that God loves and moves against all that God purposes to do. He especially hates those who belong to God, because he knows the redeemed will spend eternity in the heaven that he lost.
Satan also knows the Word of God, and from the Word of God he knows about his end, that he will be thrown into the Lake of Fire by the One he hates the most, Jesus Christ the Son of God when he comes. Satan knows the redemption story and at every point in that story he wars against it. Every person he manages to corrupt, these are his trophies, and he has many.
When the Jews were in Egypt and being used as slaves, God brought Moses into the world. Satan put it into the heart of the Pharaoh of Egypt to declare that all the male babies be slaughtered in order to kill Moses, the one God would use to deliver his people. This was Satan's attempt to prevent the work of God in God's plan to redeem his people out of Egypt, which would turn out to be one of the greatest deliverances in history. It was so great that today the Jewish people celebrate it at every Passover, recounting the whole story of how God sent Moses to bring the children of Israel out of bondage into freedom from slavery.
Satan knows how to recognize "the last days," knowing that it will be the time his end will come. He knows that the signs of "the last days" will take place when God is in the process of fulfilling his promise to bring the Jews, who were scattered across the entire earth, back to the land of their fathers. Seeing the budding of this plan, Satan moved against God's plan for the Jewish people. He put it into the heart of Adolph Hitler to kill them all, because if he could manage to destroy them, then the events of "the last days" couldn't take place. He devised an enormous plot to get this accomplished, and succeeded in slaughtering six million Jews during what would be called "the Holocaust." But he failed to prevent God from restoring the Jews to their ancient homeland. Though few in number, there were survivors and they went on to emigrate to the land of their fathers in one of the greatest stories in the history of the world, the story of the restoration of Israel.
Today, the story goes on, and Satan's role in it is only too obvious. Though he didn't succeed in destroying them all in the Holocaust, he now has a better plan. He has raised up the leaders of the nation of Iran to attack them with nuclear weapons, something that didn't even exist until this generation. If he succeeds in this, he will destroy every Jew in the country of Israel.
So ...what do you think the odds are that he will succeed?
The God of Israel has promised to bring the Israel story to completion. This will happen when the Messiah returns to this earth and they will finally see that he is the Son of God, the one who first came to die as the atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind, but who will come this time as the warrior King. All the nations of the earth will be there warring against the Jews in a united determination to destroy them at the war called "Armageddon." That is when the Messiah will come and put an end to Satan and his maniacal hatred, throwing him and his followers into the Lake of Fire where they will remain through all eternity.
This, my friends, is also YOUR enemy. Every born-again believer becomes a hated enemy to Satan. Every person filled with the Spirit of God is a threat to Satan and he will move against them with all kinds of hateful attacks, bringing as much trauma and tragedy into their lives as he can, so as to make them hate God and turn from Him.
The only protection we have is in understanding this by knowing the Word of God, feeding daily in God’s Word and spending time with him in prayer. This kind of believer Satan cannot destroy. But he never gives up, so it behooves us to stay on guard always, and be aware of the traps set to cause us to fall.
If Satan can keep you from the Word of God, he can cause your heart to become spiritually dull. He can take you down with doubt, and if not doubt then fear, and if not fear, then discouragement. Your survival spiritually necessitates an intimate closeness to the Lord and an undying determination to remain faithful to him no matter what.
Our sojourn here is short, and for those who keep the faith they have the joys of heaven ahead for all eternity.
“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil;" Exodus 23:2 One of the most influential motivations in human behavior is "what everyone else is doing." Some call it "the herd instinct." People have the idea that if everyone else is doing it or believing it, it must be right. But how wrong that can be! If one is going to follow Jesus Christ, he will have to deny this instinct, because what everyone else is doing is many times contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's a hard one. It takes courage to follow Jesus Christ, it takes utter commitment, and it takes the willingness to pay the price of scorn and rejection - because sometimes the believer will be called upon to pay that price. Many times he will be standing alone in the scorn of society, when it would be so much easier to just go along with the crowd. If one is going to follow Jesus Christ, he must understand "the world." People have the concept that the world is basically good. The Word of God tells us it isn't. In fact, the Lord tells us that it’s steeped in evil. "We know that we are of God, AND THE WHOLE WORLD LIES IN WICKEDNESS." 1st John 5:19 Most, innately, want everyone to just get along. People want tolerance, just do your thing and let me do mine. Whatever feels good, do it. Whatever makes you happy, go for it. On the surface this seems good doesn't it? We feel we need to just love everyone and do whatever it takes to keep the peace. That's fine for the world. It is not fine for one who will follow Christ, because the principles of the world are contrary to the principles of the Word of God. You can't have them both, they conflict with each other, and that's oftentimes going to put the believer in a quandary. "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." 1st Corinthians 3:19 One time I was in a store and as I checked out, the girl behind the counter noticed my birthdate on my driver's license and commented, "oh you're a Scorpio." So what am I to do, just ignore it and keep the peace? I was on the spot as she looked at me with smiling recognition and said she was a Scorpio too. "No," I said to her, "I don't have a sign." She looked at me quizzically and said, "you don't HAVE a sign?" "No," I said. "My only sign is the sign of the Cross." The look on her face said it all, she was horrified and she quickly finished up taking my payment and literally ran out into a side room. Interestingly, I had not pre-thought that, it came out of my mouth unbidden. Obviously, I was on assignment. But I think the part that stood out to me the most was the intense embarrassment I felt, knowing I was going to look like one of those weird fundamentalist fanatics to her and to anyone around listening, and that stung. I chided myself saying that If something that small was so embarrassing, what would happen if it were something serious? Would I buckle? I upbraided myself all the rest of that day over my weakness as shown in my feelings of embarrassment as everyone around just looked at me. It will always sting, because we live in a fallen human nature. "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels (human nature), that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us." 2nd Corinthians 4:7 To follow Jesus Christ is going to cost us. Rejection hurts. Embarrassment hurts. In your human nature you'll want to do whatever it takes to keep the peace ...but you can't make peace with the world. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household... And he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me." Matthew 10:34-36, 38 Consider the embarrassment Jesus had to endure from those who ridiculed him as he hung naked and bleeding on a cross. Yet he could not, and would not stray even for a moment from the truth - no matter the cost.