I was talking with my son a couple days ago about the devil. How weak he is. How he lies about everything. About how Jesus totally defeated him, and he has no power at all to do anything to us. None. He can do nothing at all of any consequence to anyone.
Except lie.
And, I told my son, I can prove that he is powerless. He hates all Christians, he hates anything to with Jesus, the gospel, the Church, the Truth. If he had his way he would kill every single Christian today. But he can’t. If he could, he would. He only comes to “steal, kill and destroy.” But he literally cannot touch those who are safe in the hollow of God’s hand.
He, like Jesus, works through the thoughts, words and actions of people.
The enemy can only lie to people, and if they believe the lie, then they do his work and the world experiences evil of all sorts. But he cannot actually DO anything. Please remember that!
I told my son that the enemy convinces people of what is wrong (including many Christians), they believe these wrong things are truth, and they do the actions associated with that lie. That can include any kind of evil one can imagine, but it’s all done at the hands of those who are believing the lies.
We see this every single day in the cultural wars surrounding us. The war is real, but our warfare is not against flesh and blood. It may be fleshly hands doing the dirty work, but behind it is the evil, cowardly, defeated liar whose only goal is to steal, kill and destroy.
The only real, lasting solution to all of this is to train more and more people about the lies of the enemy. But in order for that to happen, people must be filled with the Holy Spirit, because only through God living in us do we have the ability to understand truth from lies. Romans 8:7-8 says “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Not only do they not want to serve God, they are not even capable of doing the righteous thing.
This is why this next Great Awakening (which has already begun) is going to change the face of the planet.
We can’t just strive to get people into the kingdom by convincing them to recite a “salvation prayer.” It’s been proven that something like 10% of this kind of conversion is authentic. No, Jesus Himself told us that we are to “make disciples of all nations.” This does not mean get them to recite a sinner’s prayer and then walk away from them. We invite them in, we disciple them, we teach them the ways of God, we welcome them as part of the family.
You want to change the culture around you? The only lasting solution is to change the hearts of the people. And that is a task that requires every single one of us to do everything we can to spread the love and truth of Jesus everywhere we go, with everything we do, and everything we say.