Deuteronomy 30:19-20 | NKJV (19) I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; (20) that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”
The overall quality of our lives today is largely based on the decisions that we made in the course of our lives yesterday.
The truth is that whatever the quality of our lives is at this current moment is a result of the decisions that we made yesterday.
God is always endeavoring to move in our lives to help us to make the right decisions that will allow His blessing and His life to be our life experience.
Contrary to that, the enemy of our souls is also trying to move in our lives to shape our decision-making process in order to thwart the plan of God from coming to pass in our lives.
2 Corinthians 2:11 | AMPC (11) To keep Satan from getting the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his wiles and intentions.
2 Corinthians 2:11 | TPT (11) …so that we would not be exploited by the adversary, Satan, for we know his clever schemes.
No one in their right mind is going to make a conscious decision for death in any of its forms and desire to experience that in their lives.
Deception is not just one of the ways that the enemy can bring the effects of the curse into your life. it is the only way.
Main Point – If Satan cannot deceive you, he cannot defeat you.
God will not impose his good will on you even if it would be in your best interest nor will he allow Satan to impose his will on you for evil.
Satan cannot afflict you with the destructive effects of the curse unless you allow it by choosing, with your own free will, something that opens you to those efforts.
John 8:44 NKJV (44) You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
Think about it for a moment. Satan is not called the father of destruction; he’s called the father of lies.
If Satan had the power to destroy you, he would have already done it.
Hebrews 2:14-15 | NKJV (14) Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, (15) and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Ephesians 6:11 | NKJV (11) Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Notice this verse did not say that you are standing against sickness, or poverty or some other crisis. No you are standing against the wiles of the devil. Wiles in the concordance means “trickery”.
The Armor is not given to us to protect us from negative circumstances; it’s designed to enable you to stand against the root cause of all of Satan’s attacks, which is deception.
Revelation 20:1-3 NKJV (1) Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. (2) He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; (3) and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
The Word does not say that he will no longer cause famines and sickness, anger, hatred or wars and killings. Rather, the root cause of all those things will cease. He will deceive no more.
Deception – to convince someone that something is true and valid when it is actually untrue and invalid.
No one intentionally chooses destruction or the curse. The only way that the devil can defeat someone is by getting him or her to believe something that is untrue and invalid.
In other words, Satan can’t bring broad, sweeping evil into your life unless you, in effect, choose it.
And you won’t choose it unless he can deceive you into believing a lie.
If he can get you to back down from the Word of God because you have gotten weary of the deception and eventually quit, he has won the battle.
1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV (13) No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
The good news is that he has no new tricks up his sleeves, therefore everything we need to know about how to stand against his schemes is already written in God’s Word.
There are six primary things that Satan tries to deceive people with:
- He is not real.
- You are helpless against him.
- The Bible is literally not the truth.
- It really doesn’t matter what you believe.
- It really doesn’t matter how you think.
- It really doesn’t matter what you say.
The only strategy that he has to do this in our lives is to deceive us in some way to believe something other than the truth of God’s Word and make choices for death based on this wrong belief.
If he can keep you in that deception then he can keep you in whatever bondage you may be in.
The challenge for us as believers is to make sure that we are consciously aware of Satan’s desires and protect ourselves from deception so that it does not affect our decisions and we are able to enjoy the quality of life Jesus came to bring us.
John 8:32 | NKJV (32) And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”