Dispelling the Devil’s Deceit

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8, NLT)

I hate bullies. I know we’ve all encountered our fair share of them in life. I can remember back to my days of recess on the playground. I went to a really small school from kindergarten through 8th grade, so, for the most part, everyone got along well. Small class sizes and excellent teacher-to-student ratio made it easier to manage any type of bullying behavior that might arise. But, kids will be kids and, more specifically in this case, boys will be boys.

It was a beautiful afternoon, so that meant gathering outside on the open field for some football during recess. It was all the boys, and me, of course. I’ve loved sports for as long as I can remember and there was no way you’d find me on the swing set, or anywhere else on the playground for that matter, when there was a game to be played. After picking teams and devising plans, our game of “touch” football commenced. All these years later, I can still distinctly remember running down the field on the edge of the grass near the blacktop. I had just caught a pass and was headed toward our makeshift end zone, about to score a touchdown, when from my periphery I saw a classmate running to “touch” me for the tackle. His two hands braced my left shoulder with a shove, sending me hurtling forward where I landed on my right side along the edge of the blacktop. “Ouch!” I remember thinking. As I gathered myself and got back on my feet, I noticed blood on the top of my right shoulder (I still have the scar to prove it), sending me inside to the nurse and thus ending my recess period for the day. I was so mad! One, I was about to score a touchdown, and two, I just knew this boy added the little shove at the end because he didn’t like being outdone by a girl. Sometimes bullying is outright and obvious, but other times it’s more obtuse and obscure. In this case, I knew it was the latter.

The biggest bully of them all, the devil, often operates under those pretenses as well. Two tactics that I’ve discovered are often used by the enemy are partial-truths and perspective. Together, let’s unpack those techniques a bit more. Then we’ll apply it to a real-life situation I recently encountered with a friend where the enemy played to partial truths, broken pasts, and differing perspectives to try to bring division.

I often find myself caught up in deciphering the difference between a lie from the enemy and the truth from God. It can be difficult because the enemy is so good at utilizing statements containing partial truths that are just murky enough to make me question the ultimate Word of what God says about me. Working through the messages of deception from the enemy is hard enough on my own. But, to complicate things even further, we don’t live in isolation. We are called to exist in community with other believers and walk together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Take any equation and add to it someone you love and care about who sees the world from a different perspective, and it becomes even more enticing for the enemy to try to mislead us.

This situation has played itself out for thousands of years, dating all the way back to the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:1 it states, “The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’” From the moment of his inception, the enemy has been dishing out these tricky truths to steer us away from God’s good plan for our lives. We all see the world through different lenses and communicate in diverse ways. Therefore, the enemy utilizes that information in combination with his knowledge of our past hurts to prey on our conversations and bring chaos and confusion.

Some time back, I spent an evening with some friends that ended with a long conversation lasting into the wee hours of the night. Generally, I’m not a major night owl, but when it comes to spending time with those I love and chatting about Jesus, I’m all in for whatever happens. In this particular instance, the exchange started out wonderfully as we talked about life and shared things that were on our hearts. Engaging in God-honoring dialogue is not something the enemy enjoys and thus, will often try to attack. This particular time, as it progressed later into the evening, that is exactly what the enemy did. Physical fatigue, unique insecurities, and differing perspectives provided a recipe for disaster as the enemy attacked our conversation in a way that was intended to cause division between my friend and myself. We continued back and forth in dialogue until my friend experienced a moment where she realized how significantly the enemy was at work. Immediately, she called out the truth in the name of Jesus, we spent a brief time in prayer, and turned in for the night to get some sleep.

A couple of days later, she and I reconvened to work through all the ways the enemy had been condemning our hearts through that specific conversation. When they say hindsight is 20/20, it’s true! It was eye-opening as we walked through the experience together, retrospectively, and recognized numerous tactics the enemy employed to stir up an atmosphere of negative emotions between us. The lesson we learned through that experience can be found in 1 Peter 5:8, where it states, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour (NLT).” Our faith was never intended to be passive, and I feel like this verse is a reminder of that truth. The Lord is calling us to action in order to protect our relationships and His plans for our lives.

I don’t know how the enemy may be at work attacking your life right now, but I do know one thing for sure. The devil is a bully. He knows how to use mistakes and mess-ups from our past to lead us down a path toward condemnation and shame. But God is our protector, and He has already secured our victory through Jesus’ death on the cross. Despite our sin and struggle, if we stay alert and cling to His Word, He will always dispel the deceit of the enemy and replace it with grace, convictive truth, and unconditional love.