BP 179
Maryanne believed in Jesus, but she was possessed by a dark belief. No one could ever love her. She could never be good enough for God or men.
When Maryanne was young, her mother always commented on her own weight and that of her daughter as well. She praised thin girls to Maryanne’s face and encouraged her to become like them because then she would be attractive to a man. It was always about appearance and weight for her mother. The external is all that mattered for her.
In addition to her mother’s body obsession, Maryanne’s father was emotionally distant. He was a nice man, but sadly was incapable of discerning the needs of his daughter’s heart. So, neither mother nor father were connected to their daughter’s heart. She was alone beneath her skin.
Maryanne grew up and entered adulthood with the belief that she would never be chosen. She believed she would never be seen, or if she was seen, her body would not be as attractive as the women around her. Her female friends and most other women were always chosen before her.
By the age of 28, Maryanne had been the maid of honor in five weddings confirming her belief that she would never be the #1 woman to a man. She would always come in second. Less than others. A supporting cast member.
Even when she was chosen by a man for a few months, accusations and shame, like vicious piranhas, shredded any belief that she was lovable. She ended up pushing the man away and soon found herself alone as usual. Once again, her fears were confirmed via self-fulfilling prophecy. Her entrenched dark beliefs about herself determined her reality.
Where did Maryanne’s unchallengeable beliefs come from? Most psychologists would tell you that this young woman is afflicted by misbeliefs, stinking thinking, rigid cognitions, etc., and that she needs cognitive behavioral therapy to defy the false beliefs and adopt realistic beliefs about herself and others.
I would not disagree. I would simply add that a thief known as Satan can also be implicated in the unfolding of Maryanne’s tragic story. John 10:10 tells us that “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
It has been my observation after working with hundreds of clients and patients over the last forty years that Satan plants at least one toxic lie in every child that is deviously designed to steal something from the child, kill her true self, and destroy her connection to God and others. Maryanne clearly had lies planted in her heart at a susceptible age when the mind is vulnerable to lies and accusations.
Let’s begin this post with the biblical truth that Satan is an enemy of God and every being created in His image. Accordingly, Satan will always be an opposer in all your relationships. He wages war to prevent you from knowing and loving God, others, and even your own self.
What have saints over the years said about the enemy of men and women?
We are evidently no friends of Satan. Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects. The very fact that he assaults us should fill our minds with hope.
– J. C. Ryle
There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.
– C.S. Lewis
I know well that when Christ is nearest, Satan also is busiest.
– Robert Murray McCheyne
Before we take a closer look at the enemy’s methods, let’s settle on the purpose of the human soul. Some might say that the purpose of mankind is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever (or glorify Him by enjoying Him forever). I believe such a statement of human purpose is clearly biblical.
I also believe that human purpose in God’s plan is Multidimensional. We are called to glorify God, to become more like Jesus, and to obey the two great commandments, namely, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.
Our purpose, then, is to be in relationship with God and others and ourselves—to love all three eternal beings, God obviously being the primary object of our affections.
So, God is all about relationship. He is the author of intimacy. God sent His Son to us for the purpose of reconciliation, redemption, peace, closeness, access to Him, friendship, intimacy, love. Satan’s goals are diametrically opposite to those of God. He fights for alienation, exile, conflict, distance, striving to keep many men and women strangers to God, working all the time with believers to create separation from the God they love, and possibly even to stir up hatred and doubt toward their Creator.
Satan, the fallen angel, is opposed to His Creator. So, there is a spiritual and relational war raging. This conflict sounds very similar to Galatians 5:14ff where it says, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
The truth is that Christians are in a war on two fronts. On the outside we fight Satan. On the inside, we fight sin and the flesh. Accordingly, we need an all-powerful God from whom we can draw strength to engage in this two-front campaign against darkness. It is also important to note at this point that the objective of this post is not to blame Satan for everything and so let humans off the hook for responsibility. Satan does indeed tempt but we still are responsible for reaping what we sow. We are the ones who pursue evil desires and the passions of the flesh.
In summary, God desires relationship, and Satan seeks to steal, kill, and destroy relationships. The purpose of this post is to briefly list some of the ways in which the prince of darkness strives to drive stabbing wedges between our own hearts, God, and other men and women.
Some of Satan’s stratagems and roles are listed below. Designer Therapy for Life has addressed some of these in the past, but others have been added as well. As you read through this list, I encourage you to identify the ways in which Satan wars against you and your relationships. Add to my list as you are able.
+ Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said that when we are tempted to sin, the powers of darkness may not always want us to hate God, but simply to forget God when sin lures us into dangerous places. Forgetting is one of the enemy’s tools (“methods,” in the Greek).
+ Satan is the distracter who distances us from God with other affections.
See 1 Peter 2:11 where it says, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”
Romans 7:21 says, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
+ As the above passage in Romans attests, the powers of darkness wage war against the human soul, hunting it down and seeking to capture it. So, Satan is also a Hunter who actively seeks to trap or kill his prey.
In 2 Timothy 2:25b, 26 it is written, “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”
+ The Settler
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased [bold emphasis is mine].
According to Lewis, we could make the argument that Satan desires us to settle for less when God made us to desire more—ultimately to pant after Him like a deer pants for water. Yes, God created you not to kill your desires but to turn them in the right direction toward Him.
+ The Accuser
“And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” ~ Revelation 12:9ff.
One of Satan’s methods is to accuse believers. What might some of these accusations be? Possibly that the Christian is bad even after Jesus has credited His righteousness to him, that he will never be good enough for God to love Him, possibly even that he is not even a believer since he continues to sin.
The passage above from Revelation also refers to Satan as a deceiver. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that Satan is the architect of all the world religions, all the belief systems that defy God’s truth in Scripture and fictionalize other paths to God or god that are opposed to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.
+ The Sifter
Luke 22: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”
The devil demands to have us so that he might “sift us” and cause our faith to fail. This word Jesus uses literally means to shake in a sieve. Picture being violently shaken.
+ The Disguiser:
2 Corinthians 11:14-15 says, “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.”
One of Satan’s methods is to hide his evil intentions behind a mask of light. He will present himself as an angel of light when he only loves darkness. Beware of this deception by the enemy of your soul. Here is a reason why it is so important to be reading and internalizing the word of truth and to be living in community with other believers so they can help you discern what is from the true Light and what is from the prince of darkness.
Matthew 7:15: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
+ The Shamer:
The voice of shame (Satan) says that you are less than others, that you are a mistake, that you are condemned, that you must hide your badness so that others will not see it, that you are worthy of death. I believe that after Peter had denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion, one reason Jesus sought out his disciple and spoke to him about his denials was to relieve Peter from the shame and sifting and accusations that Satan was accosting his heart with day and night.
+ The Liar
The lies Satan whispers (or shouts) to humans are far too many to address. I will make only a few comments here about the lies.
As we saw in the case of Maryanne, Satan plants at least one lie in the mind and heart of every child. This belief lingers and puts down deeper roots every day unless it is exposed and extracted over time. Here is where Christians have an amazing advantage over unbelievers for they have the Spirit of truth living in their hearts to help them identify and destroy arguments, strongholds, “and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” ~ 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.
Satan strives to take men and women captive, and God gives us weapons with divine power to destroy the methods of Satan and take them captive. He came to set us free from the law of sin and death.
Darkness can plant the lie in a Christian’s heart that says, “You’re behind!!” This lie makes you believe that your journey of growth must be in lockstep with the cadence of those around you when, in fact, the journey is unique for all of us.
Satan lies about good parents for ill and he lies about bad parents saying that their lies and shame is true of the child.
Satan messes with (sifts?) human perceptions (most often when we are children?) and causes us to see things that are not there, not true, not real.
+ The Counterfeiter
Satan has limited power. He is not on the same level as the One who gave him existence. He cannot create anything. He can only attempt to distort God’s creation.
The enemy of our souls speaks half-truths, either leaving out part of the truth or adding something that is not true. He might take Scripture and tell you to be angry (but leave out the part about not sinning) or he might tell you to treat everyone with love (but blind you to the part about speaking the truth. He might tell you to eat from the tree God has forbidden lying to you (adding falsehood to truth) that you will become like God (in the garden of Eden, specifically knowing good and evil).
Satan will manipulate character counterfeits like people pleasing masquerading as humility or peacekeeping masquerading as peacemaking or trying to control sin and being good masquerading as faith, trust, and righteousness.
+ A prime strategy of Satan is to cast us into a spiritual and psychological mineshaft.
In the mineshaft of rage and powerlessness, humans can annihilate themselves psychologically, spiritually, physically (suicide). They can also annihilate others such as in mass shootings.
In the mineshaft of hopelessness, even Christians might curse under their breath, throw their phone, and exclaim, Screw it—I’m done with it all! I give up. I’m unlovable and no one knows how to love me and God doesn’t exist.
The mineshaft is the breeding ground for borderline feeling and thinking and is fertile soil for the total deconstruction of faith.
+ Satan blurs the truth and tries to convince us that justification and sanctification are synonymous.
How defeating it is for a follower of Jesus to believe that he or she should be perfect immediately once they are saved. There is no room for a learning curve, for growth. God demands perfection immediately on the threat of shame, anger, and disowning of His child. Once again, good behavior is the distorted gospel as opposed to imputed righteousness.
+ Bait and Switch
Darkness urges you to pursue the passions of your flesh (possibly through the methods of rationalization or forgetting God), promising you good rewards. But once you sin and disobey God, Satan turns on you via lies, accusations, shame, blaming, and destroys you. At this point, you can plummet into the awful mineshaft of annihilation.
+ Satan is the Prince of the Piranhas
At just the right moment, Satan opens the gate and releases the shredding, tearing, destroying piranhas from hell that consume everything good in your mind and heart until you feel like a nobody, like an animal, like an alien who does not belong in the fellowship of men and women, like an outcast.
+ Divide and Conquer
Here we see one of Satan’s primary strategies, namely, to cull a steer or cow (a man or woman) from the herd, drive it into an isolated box canyon all by itself, and then destroy it with accusations, deceptions, and lies that can lead to hatred for self and others and deep doubts about the love of God.
+ True guilt v False guilt
Overlapping with shame, Satan’s goal is to stir up a tempest of condemnation in your heart and drown out God’s voice of conviction. For some people, they cannot distinguish destructive condemnation from gentle conviction, so they eventually believe that God is always angry with them and deeply disappointed in their struggles as a human. This lie is adamantly opposed to the truth of the word that says in Hebrews 4:15ff, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
+ Satan urges people to Hide
This strategy from the pit of hell tells you that hiding flaws, strong emotions, sin, and one’s actual true self is safer and healthier than allowing God and others to see you. Witness Adam and Eve’s behavior in the Garden of Eden after they had sinned: they attempted to hide from God.
+ Good form, bad content. Pleasant appearance covering internal ugliness.
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” ~ 2 Timothy 3:5ff.
This method of darkness relates to Satan masquerading as an angel of light and his children masquerading as men and women of righteousness. The enemy will encourage you partly through hiding and denial of sin that all you need to do is look good on the outside because the inside doesn’t really matter.
+ Satan disqualifies us from serving God due to past sin and accuses us of future ineptness.
When we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). God actually removes our sins as far as the east is from the west, but Satan rubs our faces in our past sin and uses it to undermine our service in God’s kingdom.
+ Darkness pronounces a counterfeit subjective identity over humans that supplants God’s innate objective identity.
We witness this deception in many people but possibly especially in LGBTQ+ culture. Instead of seeing the anguish in the human soul as a symptom of being out of relationship with God and others and one’s own hearts, Satan seduces men and women by demanding that the solution is not to change their heart but to change their body and/or their identity. An external solution is proffered by darkness when an internal new creation is actually what is absolutely needed.
+ The roaring lion of 1 Peter 5 is the key player in the deconstruction of faith that leads to a minimizing of God’s word, the shrinking of God’s character, or possibly even the end of belief.
“Throw out the baby with the bathwater,” is Satan’s version of healthy deconstruction of faith.
Exchange God for the creature and settle for less is the way of darkness. Love the finite more than the infinite.
+ Black and white thinking is a powerful strategy of the devil
One example of this rigid thinking is: Darkness can convince us to go to one of two extremes. We can see the Bible and God as full of mystery and stop far short of the line, of digging into Scripture from discovering all the truth we can unearth; or we can go past the line and believe that we should have answers to everything in the Bible. We should accept no “antinomies.” We must never settle for contradictions between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles.
Other examples of this strategy from hell are rigid thinking that dichotomizes life into “Peace or war, truth or love, inclusion or hatred.”
+ Satan is the engineer of Separation
Throughout all these roles and methods of darkness, we see the common theme that Satan strives to separate us from God, others, and our own selves (because we cannot look inside and see our own sin when darkness has convinced us that we are unforgivable or unlovable).
There is so much more that could be said about the ancient serpent and the great dragon, but you get the idea. Satan exists to steal, kill, and destroy.
The solution to the devious methods of the dark enemy is to practice the presence of God. Believe in the Father, walk with your Savior and Friend, the Son, and seek the counsel and teaching of the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. Abide with God.
In the end, it’s all about Presence. The Triune God has been in relationship with each other forever—loving, serving, glorifying, communicating—basically everything but forgiving because God is perfect and never sins so no forgiveness was ever needed! Is it any surprise, then, that you have been designed for love, intimacy, friendship, fellowship, abiding with God and one another? No, not at all.
One day, Satan’s opposition will come to an end. The Almighty God will cast the serpent in to the lake of fire and the long war will be over. Finally. In the meantime, we fight the battle 24-7 as we look to Him who has gone before us and won the victory over sin and death and Satan.
2 Corinthians 2:10ff: “Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs [methods, plots].”
Ephesians 2:1ff: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . .”
