Christian Living

Watch Out for the Enemy

by Martha Kinney
08/13/17
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1 Peter 5:8 ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’

Let’s talk about our adversary the devil. If we are to grow as children of God, we should know our enemy. Jesus never underestimated the power of the devil, but prepared Himself spiritually for each encounter. We, on the other hand, seem to treat Satan lightly and so are often ensnared by his plans.

First, you must understand and always remember the devil has NO HONOR. He never played fair and he never will. God’s Word calls him a liar and the father of lies. He does not care one bit about you or for you as a person. He only wishes to use you for his purposes. You are a means to hurt the heart of God and so he will promise you anything and give you most anything if he can damn your soul or use you to harm the cause of Christ.

If you are a Christian, you can be assured that he, or most likely his demons, will attack you and try to cause you to be discouraged or disobedient. At the very least he will try and make you ineffective as a Christian.  He loves to create dissention and hostilities within our human families and within the church [the body of Christ] When we fight and quarrel among ourselves we become fragmented and the enemy has a way in.

 Any one of these will cause harm to God and His desire to save all of mankind from sin and hell. So don’t take the devil lightly. He is our enemy, or more accurately, we are his enemy. As a Christian we have the ability to increase God’s power and decrease his in this world. He doesn’t like that and so we have become a target of his. Still you must also remember that he is a defeated foe. Jesus crushed him at Calvary. Scripture bears this out in several places including this verse. It calls the devil a roaring lion.

When a lion is in his youth and prime, he doesn’t go around roaring as he hunts. He is swift and silent in his ability to kill. But as he ages, he cannot run as fast and even the weak ones can get away. So, he reverts to scare tactics, he roars in hopes of frightening his prey long enough for him to be able to overtake it.

So it is with the enemy, he is defeated and thus he knows he cannot overtake us. However, if he can scare us, get us to doubt, or forget he has lost; he will try and take us by surprise. Too often we are foolish enough to let him do just that. Thus, we are told to be clear-headed and vigilant so that he cannot sneak up on us or fool us. Clear-headed is another term for sober.