"But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”
--2 Corinthians 11:3
If you noticed I kept referring to Satan as the enemy in my past articles. If he is an enemy how does he strike us? In his booklet, One 2 One, Steve Murrell emphasized three main weapons that Satan employed three devastating weapon of destruction – temptation, deception, and accusation.
Temptation
One day you are wondering in Ayala and all of a sudden you see a young pretty Korean girl wearing skimpy attire and displaying a lot of her flesh, as if she is just inside her apartment. Nature dictates that we look and appreciate anything that is attractive to the eyes, and there is nothing wrong with it. But the problem is, the longer you allowed yourself to be hypnotized by her pretty face, and her perfect skin, your imagination started playing indecent images of you and the girl, even without your permission initially. Who flashed those very delicious images in your mind? The truth is, you just been tempted by the cunning one. Now you have to make a decision real quick – to indulge or to flee; to wallow in your lustful fantasy or dash back to reality; to give in to temptation or to choose life over spiritual death.
Satan will do everything to take us away from the protective fold of our loving Father and into his lair by tempting us everyday. But you and I have the power NOT to choose him. As the saying goes, “You cannot prevent the birds from flying over your head, but you can prevent it from building a nest on your head.” You and I have inherited real powers, and one of this is our power to choose between salvation, and death. So choose wisely.
Deception
I once read a joke about a politician who died. When he got to the gate of heaven St. Peter told him that he can choose between heaven and hell, but before he will choose he has to stay in each place for one day. First stop was hell. When he arrived he was warmly met by his political allies and enemies. Satan even threw a party for him. The next day he reluctantly bid goodbye, and went to heaven with St. Peter. Heaven was very peaceful with angels singing beautiful songs. Everybody was sharing what they have, and were very friendly with each other. But the politician missed the wild party, the wild music, and the wild girls, so the next day when St. Peter asked him, he chose hell. When he got to hell, to his horror, the place was extremely hot, and the other politicians were screaming in constantly pain and suffering. “What happened?” he asked in a state of shock. Satan replied with a grin, “The other day we were campaigning, today you voted!”
Satan will stop us from pursuing the path to life at all cost by hiding the truth from us. He will sugarcoat a sinful choice with immediate pleasure or lesser immediate pain thereby making it convenient for you and me to choose it. In the long run, it will spell disaster for our body and soul, e.g., lying, philandering, gossiping, hating, taking illegal drugs, boozing, indulging in too much in unhealthy food, etc.
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