Satan’s Mind Games

June 29, 2023 / newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

Last Sunday, I was hit hard by a massive, full on attack of evil.

While the musicians were doing their music practice ad other people were getting things ready for church, I found a big stream of negative thoughts going through my head. I was making judgements against other people, being resentful of the least important things. Everywhere I looked, I found a reason to be frustrated. It was like this volcano of violence was stirring in my head, and it was about to erupt.

Not a nice scenario for just before church!

I closed myself in my office and began to repent of my wrong thinking. Then I rebuked satan and told him to get out of my head and out of our building. I claimed it all for Jesus and everything calmed down. The peace of God began to reign.

When we are walking with the Lord, satan is always working to trip us up. He puts thoughts into our minds that sound like our thoughts but really are not. Satan knows our weaknesses, so he will always press the buttons that get the maximum effect. It might be lust, jealousy, accusations, greed… the list is endless.

The key to overcoming these things is to keep our attention on Jesus.

In our daily activities, our busy-ness or stresses, we can find our eyes diverted from Jesus and onto other things. That is when satan will slip in the wrong thoughts, the destructive mind space.

The cure is simple.

First;y recognise that these thoughts are not yours but from the enemy.

Secondly repent of letting satan get into your thinking.

Thirdly, dedicate yourself again to the Lord.

After that, it is just a matter of staying vigilant. When those thoughts start to come into your head, quickly turn to prayer and worship.

The funny thing is that when we do that, the devil finds his tactics are not working any more, and he will leave us alone, until another source of temptation can be found.

Stay close to the Lord!

God Is Greater Than Halloween

October 27, 2022 / newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

I hate Halloween because it has become a celebration of evil. Of all the cultural imports that we have received from the USA – yes I know that it started in Europe but the event we celebrate in Australia is basically the US version brought in by movies and TV – this is the worst. We ignore their best traditions like Thanksgiving and run with Halloween instead.

Halloween (pronounced “Hallow” not “Hollow”) is the night before All Saints Day (sometimes called All Hallows Day in the past). All Saints is a celebration of the victory in Christ of the believers who have gone before. It started to be celebrated in the 300s and was fixed as November 1 by the 700s.

All Saints reminds us that Jesus has defeated satan through His death and resurrection. The Kingdom of God is advancing person by person around the world. The Gates of Hell (that is, the fortress of the devil) will not prevail.

The custom arose that at Halloween, the eve of All Saints Day, people would look for opportunities to mock the devil. One such custom was to dress children up in costumes that mock the world of the dead — ghosts, ghouls etc. Satan’s power is so destroyed by the victory of Christ that even children can laugh at him.

The key to understanding this is that satan’s first sin was pride, thinking that he could assume the throne of the Most High God. (See Isaiah 14:13-14). We can celebrate satan’s downfall by mocking his pride. It’s a bit like putting gargoyles on the roof of the church to collect the rain water – it is a statement that these ugly representations of demons are so ridiculous and now we use them to protect the structure of God’s building.

Some people find this business of mocking the devil a bit hard to understand. We need to remmber that in a society where Christianity has overcome paganism and everybody is assumed to be a christian, the social dynamics are very different to the present day where the church is in a minority position.

Where Halloween has gone wrong, I believe, is that the world tries to have the christian festival without Christ (like they do with Christmas and Easter). Rather than being a mockery of satan, it is now a celebration of the demonic, which is very different.

There are many anecdotal reports of increases in witchcraft, occultic activity and other demonically inspired events happening at this time of the year. Some christians react in fear, but we need to regain that sense that the devil is a defeated foe. In James 4:7, we read, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

At Halloween, and indeed every day, we need to remember that, as powerful as the devil seems, our God is greater. Put on the armour of God, and tell the devil to nick off, and he will.

Everybody Knows…

March 31, 2016March 31, 2016 / newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

authoritarian-cartoon-man

Last night’s cell group meeting generated an impromptu study on who satan is and when his fall from grace occurred. This was partly sparked by discussion on the early chapters of Genesis which record, amongst other things, the first temptation of Adam and Eve.

I looked up a couple of web-sites that asserted that satan, also known as Lucifer, was originally an archangel and the leader of the heavenly praise. There were no scriptures to back this up, so it seems to be a tradition rather than Bible teaching.

Discussion turned to two traditional passages used in the discussion- Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14. These passages often confuse me because some preachers confidently assert they talk about Lucifer in his pre-fall condition. I struggle with this because they are passages addressed as taunts against two particular human rulers. I can see how you might get an interpretation that the passages are talking about satan but they explicitly state in the text that they are addressed as taunts against the king of Babylon (Isaiah 14) and the King of Tyre (Ezekiel 28)- in fact the Ezekiel passage says this twice.

Then the revelation came. One of the group members read the Isaiah 14 passage and I heard the word I have never read before:

“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!

Isaiah 14:14

The New Living says this:

How you have fallen from heaven,
morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!

I asked the group member, “Is that the New King James?” to which she said “Yes”

So the New King James follows the original King James in translating the “morning star” as Lucifer, and then helpfully adds the section heading “The Fall of Lucifer” right before it.

That’s where they get it from.

Here’s the problem. Lucifer is a Latin name meaning “light bearer” and was used to refer to the morning star, Venus. But the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, not Latin. So when the translators of the King James Version were doing their translation work in the early 1600’s they were still influenced by the so-called Latin Vulgate Bible which was the official Catholic translation.

The translators of the NKJV have no such excuse. They should have translated is as “morning star” and maybe referred to the Lucifer translation in a footnote.

You can still choose to interpret these passages as referring to satan if you like. To me it’s a bit of a stretch to do that, especially when the original writers were clear about whom they were directing their comments at.

The NLT Study Bible, in the footnotes to Isaiah 14:12 say this:

Some see the fall of the king of Babylon here as symbolising the fall of Satan. However there is little here to suggest that Isaiah understood it in this way. He was thinking of the historical king of Babylon… the Hebrew text makes no apparent reference here to the name of Satan.

All of this shows that we should not blindly accept what people teach us about the Bible. If something doesn’t seem to make sense in the way people interpret Scripture, you should always ask for more information about why they believe that.

In an ideal world, every christian would know Hebrew and Greek. Failing that, I think it’s always a good idea to check several versions of Scripture to try and gain a better understanding of a text. Software makes this so easy to do, or use Bible apps or internet search sites such as Bible Gateway.

Gail Wallace- Why the Gender Debate is “Catching Fire”

May 8, 2014May 8, 2014 / newlifenarrabri / 1 Comment

Some very insightful commentary here on women and spiritual warfare

I recently saw the movie Catching Fire (released last November), which is based on the second book in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games¹ trilogy, and it sparked the idea for this post, which first appeared on the CBE Scroll.

For those not familiar with the story, here’s the plot of “Catching Fire” in a nutshell.

[Spoiler Alert] After winning the 74th Hunger Games (a competition in which “tributes” are forced to fight to the death), protagonist Katniss Everdeen returns to her home in the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem. Because her defiant actions in the arena have fueled a rebellion against the oppressive Capitol, President Snow forces the remaining tributes to return to the arena for another round of competition.

There are many powerful moments, but one scene in particular had implications for the gender debate taking place in conservative evangelical circles today. Before Katniss sets out, her coach gives her this advice: “When you are in the arena, you remember who the true enemy is”. As the deadly games proceed, it becomes obvious that the government wants to make sure none of the tributes return alive, and this advice makes all the difference in the final outcome.

Remember who the true enemy is.

As the debate about women’s roles is played out in the arenas of church and society today, many Christians seem set on characterizing the issue as a conflict between men and women.

Men are accused of selfishly holding onto their privilege and power at all costs, and women are accused of wanting an equal share of that power for power’s sake. Some seem to think this is a zero sum game; meaning that men will lose something if they share their power with women, when in fact, both would gain.

Still others frame the issue as a conflict between Christians and secular society. The end result is often a barrage of “friendly-fire” with collateral damage to both sides.

Could it be that we’ve lost sight of who the true enemy is?

When we draw the lines of the battle so narrowly it’s easy to forget that there is another player in these “earthly games”, one whose role in the conflict is described in Genesis 3. After being cast out of heaven, Satan’s Plan B was to become the ruler over earth. So he entices Adam and Eve into disobeying God, thinking this will give him some kind of sovereign power over them2.

But instead God’s response is this: “…I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15b). It’s like God is saying “Don’t be too smug about your success here. From now on you will be the enemy of the woman and her offspring, and One will come from her who will crush your head”, a reference to the coming Christ.

Remember who the true enemy is.

Sometimes I think our preoccupation with the consequences of sin described for Eve (“your desire shall be for your husband, and he will rule over you”, Genesis 3:16b) causes us to underestimate the depth of Satan’s enmity towards women. Enmity means conflict. Enmity means anger and loathing and hatred.

We are naive when we fail to connect that enmity to the oppression of women that has taken place through the centuries and continues today.

As Paul reminds us, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Satan knows that one way to hold back the Church is to marginalize and oppress women.

It will take the joint efforts of both women and men (empowered by the Holy Spirit) to overcome the impact of Satan’s enmity.

I believe this is a spiritual battle, not a secondary or cultural issue. Indifference or apathy only gives Satan the upper hand.

Men must recognize who the real enemy is and actively advocate for women.

Women must recognize who the real enemy is and prepare for battle by “armoring up” to stand against the devil’s schemes (Ephesians 6:10-18).

And we all need to pray earnestly for gender reconciliation in the church and in the world.

Let’s not forget who the true enemy is.

1The Hunger Games movies are not for the faint at heart. Here is a link to a review by Alissa Wilkinson in Christianity Today. Skip to the last page for information about violence (a lot), language (some), and sexuality (very little) portrayed in the movie. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/november-web-only/hunger-games-catching-fire.html.

2We know the serpent in the garden is a reference to Satan because of Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2. The serpent becomes an earthly symbol of Satan’s reprimand.