Strength is Weakness
Satan devours “strong men”.
You see it all the time. Satan, The Father of Lies works hard to convince men that they can resist him. He wants people to be confident that they can stand against him alone. So they never stand with God.
Satan is not a warrior. He is a deceiver, (Rev 12:9) an accuser, (Rev 12:10) and an adversary, (1 Chron 21:1). A cunning serpent, (2 Cor 11:3), a dragon, (Rev12:9), a tempter and a thief, (John 10:10). He is a wolf, (John 10:12).
Satan knows that it is in our pride that he can find his way in to our hearts. He doesn’t have to convince us to worship him. He only needs to convince us that we don’t need to worship God.
If we feel strong it isn’t because we are. It is simply because we have lost sight of our weaknesses. We can or will no longer see them. Pride keeps us from relying on God. Convincing us we can do it on our own. That we don’t need help.
It is in that strength that we are truly lost.
I know. I spent 20 years walking around in the dark and claiming I knew where I was going.
I was once a strong man, and because of that I was lost. For so many years I muddled through life, convinced I could do it alone. For years I refused to see the truth and by the time I had to face myself, my strength disappeared. It was then I realized it was an evil illusion.
All my strength melted away and I felt vulnerable and hopeless. A prideful soul that didn’t fit into the Armor of God.
Remember, Satan is a deceiver not a warrior.
Strong men are often tricking themselves into stepping into the battle confidently, whatever arena that is. They prepare themselves as a soldier would, readying themselves to take on the enemy head on. Satan rarely carries out a frontal attack. If he does, then it is typically just a distraction. He prefers to sneak up behind you and whisper sin into your strength.
We fool ourselves proudly walking the halls in this mansion of sin ruled by the King of Lies.
Expecting their strength to save them from the dark.
But the shadows creep, and without a hedge of protection around your heart, Satan will walk right in and attack it.
He attacks us all. We must remove Lucifer from our lives where we can. Remove the wedges between our hearts. Our enemy is not each other. I do not hate you. I hope you don’t hate me.
I hope you don’t hate.
I pray God begins to work in all our hearts to bring His soldiers together. After all, the root of all our problems it the Devil.
You may be a different color than me. That doesn’t make us enemies. Whatever the differences, they don’t matter. That does matter is what we have in common. The details don’t matter, they never really did. They were just tools to be used. It’s the raw truth. We are not enemies. We share the same enemy. We stand together on the same side of humanity.
Our enemies only weapon is temptation. He wields it masterfully.
He almost got me once.
The devil was sitting in that dark room with me that night. He sat in the corner hiding in the shadows. He had all his weight pushing on that trigger. Whispering sin into my heart.
He told me it was over. That I could not come back from all the damage I had done. He told me I was worthless. That my father was waiting for me. He almost had me. I was still fighting with my own strength. Satan is a liar, but I began to believe him. I was still fighting him alone.
In one last attempt to avoid the temptations of the devil and the demons that had tormented me for 20 years. I did something I had never done before. I lifted myself up to my knees and raised my hands high in the air.
I asked God to save me and in that moment, I stopped trying to be strong and embraced my weakness. Threw it all on the ground at Jesus’s feet.
I didn’t have to wait, I didn’t have to work for it. He gave it to me for free. I didn’t have to be strong. I had to be weak. I had to be broken so that I could be fixed.
Curled in a ball, hopeless and broken. Satan wants us there too. He sat and watched me breaking. He encouraged the collapsed and laughed at me in my broken pile. The difference is once we are there, Satan wants us to struggle in our strength. The same strength that paved the path to our destruction.
God doesn’t want us to fight anymore. He wants us to rest, submit, and become weak. Usable. My sobriety glorifies God. The way I live my life glorifies God. He worked a miracle in me that day, one day I will tell the full story.
The point is that Satan wants us to be to prideful so we don’t reach out to God for help.
Pride prevents us from hearing God or seeking His plan for our lives.
God and Satan are both waiting for us there at the bottom.
I was a strong man. I thought I was anyway.
Satan devoured me for 20 years. He thought I was wrapped up. My fate was sealed. I thought so too. I had lost all hope, only I didn’t lose it. I gave it away.
Satan thought my soul was his. Sadly, so did I. I began to accept it.
God had different plans and I was finally broken enough to listen to them.
I broke. Completely broke.
At the time, because I had not submitted to God yet, it felt like the worst moment of my life. However, looking back now, I see it for what it really was. The best moment of my entire life. The lowest I had ever been, the highest I had ever been. Promises were confirmed, God’s grace was extended to me that night.
Before I broke, my strength made me powerless. Refusing to admit that was what kept my soul shackled on the path of the damned.
It was what kept my father on that wide path. I think he would be proud.
His demons came into my life, a generational curse. Invited in by the sins of the father. His boys struggled, still do.
I was losing to daddy’s demons. Until my Heavenly Father stepped in and rescued me from the demons that took his life from him. They may torment him still. I pray that is not the case and that he found God in the quiet of his cell late that night that death came for him.
Don’t fall for the devils’ tricks. You are weak. Weakest when you feel strong. Take inventory of yourself and get right with the God who loves you. He will help you get right with yourself.
We don’t need strong men to save America. Satan devours strong men.
We need strong Christians. We need the character of moral men who value integrity and have the courage to stand against many.
We need real men who have been through the fire of life and come out the other side galvanized. Men who can stand the pressure of the devil, not because they think themselves to be strong. Or because of some oath they recited.
But because of their love and appreciation for God.
Not because they owe it to their voters, but because they owe it to God.
Strong convictions because their hearts have been convicted.
If we build our lives in God’s light we never have to move again. The shadows never creep in there. It is only when we leave the light and step into the shadows that the darkness can penetrate.
Those who put their faith into the world are like gypsies. Never growing roots because they try to please people rather than pleasing God. People constantly change, God is everlasting.
It only takes one. One sin. Every fall begins with one sin.
But we don’t have to drown in our sin. We can fly in His grace.
When you hit your bottom, and it is just you, the devil, and God. Be sure to ignore your pride. Be sure to allow yourself to feel weak. There is a purification and a renewal within it.
We are weak, but God is strong.
We must be a boat in the water, but we cannot allow the water into the boat.
Once we get there, we are lost. Satan knows we are now doing his work for him. As we sink, we often forget that with God we can walk on water.
The number one thing we can do for our soul, our loved ones, or our country is pray for them. Prayer leads to action, and sometimes it can even lead to miracles.