Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.
— Matthew 16:23
Many times in history the Christians in various towns, cities and even whole countries have given up their defense for reasons wholly evil. Worldliness, sinful pleasures and personal ungodliness have often been the cause of the churchs disgraceful surrender to the enemy. Today, however, Satans strategy is different. Though he still uses the old methods where he can do so with success, his more effective method is to paralyze our resistance by appealing to our virtues, especially the virtue of charity. He first creates a maudlin and wholly inaccurate concept of Christ as soft, smiling and tolerant. He reminds us that Christ was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth, and suggests that we go and do likewise.
Then if we notice his foot in the door and rise to oppose him he appeals to our desire to be Christlike. You must not practice negative thinking, he tells us. Jesus said, He that is not against Me is for Me. Also He said Judge not, and how can you be a good Christian and pass adverse judgment on any religious talk or activity? Controversy divides the Body of Christ. Love is of God, little children, so love everybody and all will be well. Thus speaks the devil, using Holy Scripture falsely for his evil purpose; and it is nothing short of tragic how many of Gods people are taken in by his sweet talk. The shepherd becomes afraid to use his club and the wolf gets the sheep. The watchman is charmed into believing that there is no danger, and the city falls to the enemy without a shot. So Satan destroys us by appealing to our virtues.
thought
Jesus recognized the clever tactic of Satan who was using the good intentions of Peter. Remember how Satan had quoted scripture in the wilderness temptation of Jesus. We must be alert to Satans ploys.
prayer
Lord, I struggle between the extremes of seeing Satan in everything and, on the other hand, in nothing. By Your Spirit, make me wise.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
— Second Corinthians 11:14
The Devil is a master strategist. He varies his attacks as skillfully as an experienced general and always has one more trick to use against the one who imagines he is well experienced in the holy war. By two radically opposite things the devil seeks to destroy us-by our sins and by our virtues. First, he tempts us to sin. This might be called his conventional device. It worked against Adam and Eve and still works after the passing of the centuries. By means of it millions each year are, as Paul said, drowned in destruction and perdition. One would think the human race would learn to resist the blandishments of its sworn enemy, and it probably would except that there is an enemy within the gate-the fallen heart is secretly on the side of the devil. It is, however, Satans wiliest stratagem to use our virtues against us, and this he often does with astonishing success.
By means of temptation to sin he strikes at our personal lives; by working through our virtues he gets at the whole community of believers and unfits it for its own defense. A parallel to Satans technique may be seen in the activities of certain subversive political groups who use the Constitution of the United States as a shield while they work to destroy that Constitution. By unctuous pleading for the right of free speech they seek to destroy all freedom of speech. By talking piously about government by law they push our country toward the place where there will be government by dictatorship and all laws will mean what a ruling clique of base, cynical men want them to mean. So diabolical is this method that one can only conclude that those who use it learned it from their father the devil, whose they are and whom they serve.
thought
Master deceiver that he is, Satan attacks what we consider our strengths as well as our weaknesses. He does that to us as the community of believers and as individuals. Satan is the Great Deceiver!
prayer
O Lord, give me discernment to recognize the disguises of Satan and to resist him in Your name.
I love those who seek me, and those who seek me find me.
— Proverbs 8:17
5. Seekers after God. Thanks be to God on high that these too are among us. They are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Their number is not large when counted against the millions who have forgotten their Maker, but taken together they are a goodly company and dear to the heart of God. Ah, those God-hungry souls! By nature they are no better than the rest of men, and by practice they have sometimes been worse. The one sign of their divine election is their insatiable thirst after the Source of their being. Deep calls unto deep and they hear and respond. These are almost always a disappointment to themselves, and sometimes they have for a while been a stumbling block to the world, as were Jacob and David and Peter.
But many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it, and their questing hearts find what they seek at last. The grace of God meets them as they return and changes them from what they are sorry they have been, into what they have so fervently longed to become. Towe know what the wise Greek could not know, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses. Seekers after God there surely were even in those old Grecian times and their destiny lies in the hand of the One who gave His only-begotten Son to die for the life of the world. One word needs to be added. It will go better in the of reckoning for the seeker of pre-Christian days who stretched out pagan hands toward God in hope that he might find Him, than for the careless sinner of who is sated with hearing and who refuses to repent and believe.
thought
The God-seekers among us model to us what life is all about. How amazing that when we seek God He will be found!
prayer
I want to be a seeker after You, Lord, not part-time or just on Sunday, but daily.
I thought in my heart, Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. But that also proved to be meaningless.
— Ecclesiastes 2:1
The Greek philosopher Pythagoras is said to have divided men into three classes: 1. Seekers after knowledge. 2. Seekers after honor. 3. Seekers after gain. Thus far Pythagoras. But I wonder why he failed to notice two other classes: those who are not seekers after anything and those who are seekers after God. These no doubt existed in Pythagoras as they do in ours and it is odd that he did not recognize them. Let us add them to the list. 4. Seekers after nothing. These are the human vegetables who live by their glands and their instincts. I refer not to those unfortunate persons who by birth or by accident have been deprived of their normal faculties.
There but by the grace of God go I. I do refer to the millions of normal persons who have allowed their magnificent intellectual equipment to wither away from lack of exercise. These seekers after nothing have certain large ear-marks. They may be known by the company they keep. Their reading matter is the sports page and the comic section; their art is limited to magazine covers and the illustrated trivialities of the weekly picture magazines; their music is whatever is popular and handy and loud. After work they sit and watch television or just drive around waiting for-what? It is an omen and a portent that this describes the bulk of our population in the United States, and that they constitute what we proudly call the electorate; that is, they decide the direction our country shall go, morally, politically and religiously. O tempora! O mores!
thought
Life is lent to be spent. How tragic to waste life, moment by moment, when how I spend can radically affect tomorrow.
prayer
I know, Lord, that my days are numbered and only You know that number. From the eternal perspective, may I spend well the todays.
For what hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life?
— Job 27:8
he Greek philosopher Pythagoras is said to have divided men into three classes: 1. Seekers after knowledge. 2. Seekers after honor. 3. Seekers after gain. It would be interesting if not too edifying to look for Pythagoras three classes in modern society. 1. Seekers after knowledge. These are no longer called philosophers, lovers of wisdom, but scholars, professors, scientists, who love knowledge for itself. These are intellectual magpies with a compulsive tic that drives them to collect all the shiny bits of knowledge possible; fortunately for them there are enough others with the same tic to provide them with a means of making some kind of a living here below. .
2. Seekers after honor. These are the politicians. They have an incurable itch to be known in the gates, and as a means toward this end they manage to work up a convincing if phony patriotic fever every four or six years that brings them votes and enables them to ride in the front car in the Memorial parade. Their reward is in being applauded by the masses they secretly despise, and verily they have their reward. 3. Seekers after gain. These are at the top honest businessmen who become wealthy within the law, and at the bottom racketeers who gain their wealth outside the law. Morally these latter differ not at all from the ordinary bandit, but they differ socially because they are smarter, have read a book and know a better lawyer.
thought
Knowledge, recognition and wealth-common people goals. Yet, even if achieved, the eternal tomorrow has been neglected and life wasted.
prayer
May my seeking be concentrated upon You, O God, to know You.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!
— Romans 7:24-25
When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, read the terrible words, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things . . . who changed the truth of God into a lie. On and on the devastating words flow, mounting in intensity till no one with any conscience left or any fear of moral consequences can stand to look the Judge in the face, but must cast down his guilty eyes and cry, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Apart from the Scriptures we have no sure philosophy; apart from Jesus Christ we have no true knowledge of God; apart from the inliving Spirit we have no ability to live lives morally pleasing to God. How wonderful that Christ could say, I am the way, the truth, and the life. For this we can never be thankful enough.
thought
The first step to finding the way is to realize the utter sinfulness and hopelessness of our predicament. We have been enemies of God, running from Him, weighed down with sin. Christ is the only Way. He is the Truth and the Life.
prayer
Lead me, Lord, lead me in the way everlasting through Christ, my Savior and Guide.
. . . God gave them over . . .God gave them over . . . he gave them over . . .
— Romans 1:24, 26, 28
Philosophically man has lost his way. Could he think himself out of his age-old predicament he would long ago have done it, for the world has had more than enough serious-minded men of superior intellectual endowments to examine every rabbit path in all the meadows of human thought and to explore every forest and wilderness in search of the way. Since the first fallen man got still long enough to think, fallen men have been asking these questions, Whence came I? What am I? Why am I here? and Where am I going? The noblest minds of the race have struggled with these questions to no avail.
Did the answer lie somewhere hidden like a jewel it would surely have been uncovered, for the most penetrating minds of the race have searched for it. Not a foot of ground but has been spaded up, neither is there crevice or cave anywhere in the region of human experience but has been spied into thoroughly and often as the centuries passed. Yet the answers remain as securely hidden as if they did not exist. Why is man lost philosophically? Because he is lost morally and spiritually. He cannot answer the questions life presents to his intellect because the light of God has gone out in his soul. The fearful indictment the Holy Ghost brings against mankind is summed up count by count in the opening chapters of Romans and the conduct of every man from earliest recorded history to the present moment is evidence enough to sustain the indictment.
thought
To the great questions of life there are no answers except those that terrify and condemn. Life is lent us and none of us know how much is left. We have turned from God to our own way. God has given us over but He has also loved us so much He has given H
prayer
Apart from You, Lord, there are only thick, black clouds. My only hope is to keep on going, trusting You. Hallelujah!
Thomas said to him, Lord, we dont know where you are going, so how can we know the way?
— John 14:5
It is a simple axiom of the traveler that if he would arrive at the desired destination he must take the right road. How far a man may have traveled is not important; what matters is whether or not he is going the right way, whether the path he is following will bring him out at the right place at last. Sometimes there will be an end to the road, and maybe sooner than he knows; but when he has gone the last step of the way will he find himself in a tomorrow of light and peace, or will the toward which he journeys be a of trouble and distress, a of wasteness and desolation, a of darkness and gloominess, a of clouds and thick darkness?
The inspired prophet Jeremiah says (and for that matter all the holy prophets who have spoken since the world began say) and our Lord and His apostles say that man does not know the way; indeed he hardly knows where he should go, to say nothing of the way he should take to get there. The worried Thomas spoke for every man when he asked, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? That is the truth and we had better face it squarely: the way of man is not in himself. However severe the blow to our pride, we would do well to bow our heads and admit our ignorance. For those who know not and know they know not, there may in the mercy of God be hope; for those who think they know there can be only increasing darkness.
thought
We think we know the road we are traveling and then in a moment everything comes crashing down around us-sorrow, sickness, disappointment, failure. Our hearts cry out: We dont know the way! Then we sense the quiet voice of Jesus: I am the Way, follow me.
prayer
All the way You lead me, Lord. You are the Way. I have only to follow whether in the bright sunshine or the clouds of darkness.
Among the many wonders of the Holy Scriptures is their ability frequently to compress into a sentence truth so vast, so complex, as to require a whole shelf of books to expound.
Even a single phrase may glow with a light like that of the ancient pillar of fire and its shining may illuminate the intellectual landscape for miles around.
An example is found in Jeremiah 10:23. After the Lord had spoken of the vanity of idols and had set in contrast to the gods of the heathen the glory of the living God, the King of Eternity, the prophet responded in an inspired exclamation that very well states the whole problem of humankind: O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.
The prophet here turns to a figure of speech, one which appears in the Scriptures so frequently that it is not easy to remember that it is but a figure.
Man is seen as a traveler making his difficult way from a past he can but imperfectly recollect into a future about which he knows nothing.
And he cannot stay, but must each morning strike his moving tent and journey on toward-and there is the heavy problem-toward what?
verse
I know, O LORD, that a mans life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.
— Jeremiah 10:23
thought
It is not for us to direct our steps but how often we try. Only God knows the way ahead. The Good Shepherd leads if we will but follow.
prayer
It is for You to direct my steps. Today, Good Shepherd, lead me and I will follow.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/