Imagine a man who hates you. He hates you with a deep all consuming hate, and has an intense desire to destroy you. He wants every aspect of your life to crumble – your friendships, your marriage, your children, especially your relationship with God. This person wants it all to end in disaster. Imagine a real person with these feelings towards you, feelings so strong that their sole mission in life is to ruin you, even to the point of death. Wouldn’t you do something to stop him?

This situation may be hard to imagine, but the reality is that it isn’t fictional, and unfortunately we do little to fight against him. In fact, we invite him into our life and into our homes. We include him in the decision making process, and let him influence our views on life. Yet all the while, he wants only wants us destroyed.

John 10:10 says that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Satan is real. He doesn’t like what God has and he doesn’t like what we have in God. He loves to entice us into sin and fill us with shame and embarrassment once we’ve given into temptation. He is not only a liar, but the Bible calls him the father of lies. Yet we still do little to fight him and his schemes. He can be easy to recognize but we tend to lessen the power of his schemes. He lies and we believe him. I saw a quote recently that said, “When you believe the lie, you enable the liar.” When we believe him rather than resist him and battle the lies with truth, we are enabling him to destroy our lives.

I find that I often have a warped view of Satan and how he works. I tend to err on being naïve to the depth of his schemes, not thinking that my desire to “just look at a little harmless porn” is actually the devil trying to get access to my life and destroy it.

On the other hand, I can make him out to be way more powerful than he actually is. I can end up thinking that there is a big Satan and a little God. This leads me to fear that I will never be able to break away from the grip the enemy has on my life. Remaining in this belief is dangerous and the shame and disgust can easily lead to drastic and hopeless options if not conquered.

Even though we do have someone who hates us and is trying to destroy us, there is comfort to be found in the reality that he is so small and insignificant compared to the power and majesty of God who loves us more than we can ever imagine.

In times of temptation I don’t always see God as He really is… I feel overwhelmed by darkness, and I forget that God is a powerful light that in an instant drives darkness away.

Often we read through the Old Testament and end up thinking that God is angry and hateful but what we fail to realize is that his actions are directed at the sin, not the people. His creation is so beautiful and lovely in His eyes that He hates anything that tries to separate it from Him. We are so precious to Him that He will fight for us, even to the point of sacrificing His only Son.

Our perspectives need adjusting. God is powerful. He is loving. He will fight for us. All we have to do is call on His name and the one who is set on destroying will be destroyed.

As you read the following scripture, picture yourself in a battle; a battle that you feel you are losing. You’re calling on someone to save you, he appears on the scene – powerful, consumes with love for you, fighting for your life.

The chords of death entangled me;
The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The chords of the grave coiled around me;
The snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called to the Lord;
I cried to my God for help.
From His temple He heard my voice,
My cry came before Him, into his ears.

The earth trembled and quaked,
And the foundations of the mountains shook;
They trembled because he was angry.
Smoke rose from his nostrils;
Consuming fire came from his mouth,
Burning coals blazed out of it.
He parted the heavens and came down;
Dark clouds were under his feet.
He mounted the cherubim and flew;
He soared on the wings of the wind.

He made darkness His covering,
His canopy around him –
The dark rain clouds of the sky.

Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
With hailstones and bolts of lighting.
The Lord thundered from heaven;
The voice of the Most High resounded.
He shot His arrows and scattered the enemies,
Great bolts of lightning and routed them.

The valleys of the sea were exposed
And the foundations if the earth aid bare
At your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of breath from your nostrils.

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
He drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
From my foes, who were too strong for me.

They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
But the Lord was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;

He rescued me because he delighted in me.

Psalm 18: 4-19