The devil, Lucifer, the enemy, Satan, the anti-Christ is someone we hear a lot about in Christianity simply because he is trying to disrupt the work of God and His relationship with His people. But why is this? Well simply put, it is because Lucifer is jealous of God and wants what he has. We can tell this from the early parts of the story, God ruled over all of Heaven and Lucifer was the top angel in charge of running the whole Kingdom (that's right, even above Michael and Gabriel). At one point Lucifer started to succumb to pride and think more of himself than of God. This isn't always hard to believe as history is littered with similar examples of people thinking they are better than their masters or rulers and deposing them. Lucifer was/is no different, he didn't understand why he wasn't in charge of everything seen as he practically was as he ran the whole kingdom.
This was a grave mistake on his part as the natural ruler was God and one of the things lucifer forgot was that God is creator overall and nothing would exist if God had not created it, which includes all the Angels. I am not going to cover the full story and you can read more about it in Ezekiel 28, Isaiah 14 and Luke 10. But it is safe to say that Lucifer convinced himself and many other Angels to rebel against God and try to overthrow Him and replace God with Lucifer as ruler of all. But God is all powerful and almighty and those that come against Him never succeed and after a vicious war, Lucifer was cast out of Heaven along with the angels who had supported him.
Lucifer was banished to hell which he runs as his own kingdom to this day. The devil as he is more prominently known continues to be jealous of God and His Kingdom. When the earth was created and everything in it, the devil saw that it was perfect, but he also saw the people God had created and how they held a higher regard than the angels themselves. Satan didn't want that as he found this to be a huge insult to what he was before he rebelled. So the devil came to interfere with Gods perfect creation as he knew that with the added element of freewill, he could manipulate the situation into his own favour. We know the story well of Adam and Eve who ate the fruit from the forbidden tree (something that can be found in the beginning of Genesis) and as they ate the whole relationship between people and God changed forever, there suddenly was a flaw brought in to this wonderful and perfect creation.
I can imagine he devil laughing and taking huge pride in what he had done at the time as he set out to thwart God and subvert His glorious rule. Since then we have been living with the consequences of that moment. This is where death, disease, pain, misery, hurt and upset all come from. But thankfully the story doesn't end there, as we can trace through time and history (especially thanks to the writers of scripture) we can see that step by step God has worked with mankind to keep a good world working and life continuing. God put plans and rules in place to help us continue living in the ideals of what He originally created. This was to help us to still be able to come to God in unity, harmony and relationship. Despite Our flawed state, God was still so incredibly good to His creation that He continued to love us and provide solutions to our disobedience, eventually sending His son Jesus as the perfect sacrifice to wipe away all sin for us (sin being what we call the wrongs and mistakes we do because of the flaw that is within us).
But here is the thing and this is what I want us to be clear on and careful of. The devil still exists and so does Hell. The devil is still jealous of God and wants nothing more than to subvert His rule, take His precious people away and have them as his own. So the devil along with his own army of followers (demons and evil spirits) will come to try and disrupt your life so that he can cause a rift between you and God, ultimately separating the two of you so that when the time comes for you to die you won't be saved, won't be in that relationship and ultimately won't go to Heaven, but perish under his rule in hell below. Scary thought? It is for me.
We can see the subversion in the temptation, even Satan tried to stop Jesus from doing what He needed to do on earth to restore our position with God. If you look in the Bible before Jesus started His ministry, He spent 40 days in the desert being tempted by the devil as the devil wanted to knock him off course. Interestingly enough, something that shows his intentions still, was offering Jesus all the kingdoms of the world (probably known world to those in the middle east at the time) and telling Him that if Jesus bowed and worshipped Satan, then all these kingdoms would be given to Him. Satan didn't mind Gods rule, but only if he was on top of it all. This is how the enemy (plural) comes at us, they come at the believers who know and understand God, who have been saved by Jesus Christ and are passionately filled with the Holy Spirit to go out and live as God calls us to live. We not only improve the world around us, but impact more lives for God expanding His kingdom. The devil takes this as a slight and wants to destroy as much as possible, so he will send either his demons and evil spirits after you or he will come himself to try and knock us off course.
There is a famous verse that says the enemy is like a roaring lion looking to seek, kill and destroy. What is it looking to destroy, well its your relationship with God because if he cuts that off then you won't live a life like Jesus did, impacting the world for the better. A simple analogy of this is like a fruit tree standing tall and proud in the sun. The tree provides shade and shelter to those that are hot, fruit to eat or sell to provide a living for you and your family, it also helps the birds of the air by giving them a home or shelter. The tree has many uses, it also takes in the carbon dioxide and releases oxygen effectively cleaning the air for those around it. Now when the wind blows, it comes from all directions, different sides at different times to try and knock the tree off balance and to topple it over thus ending its productive nature and killing it off. The tree is us, if we have shallow roots we will be blown around and will eventually topple over. However, if we have deep strong roots, we will stand firm in everything.
This is how we can compare ourselves with Jesus, Jesus was firmly rooted in God and the word of God, so that when the devil came and tempted Him, He knew exactly how to stand tall and firm responding with scripture and being secure in who He was. The devil couldn't persuade Him otherwise and Jesus left the desert no worse than when He had entered. We too feel like we are wandering the desert in search of something, finding our path is difficult and hard to bear. When an easy solution comes it can be very tempting to succumb to it, but we must always ask ourselves, is this of God or the enemy, if its from the enemy we must stand firm in our faith and continue on fearlessly. We must make sure our knowledge of God and our relationship with Him is strong too, so that we may see the lies when they are said to us and we can again respond with the truth of what God says.
This is the way we will act more like Jesus and less like Adam in our lives. Remember the devil can seem scary, but that is part of his trickery, the devil is more scared of us being in a strong relationship with God as we will impact this world for the better and it means the devils kingdom will remain small.
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