The Faces of Satan

Satan is referred to in the bible by various names and attributes to expose his tactics of warfare and to warn us of his devices. Satan is evil, arrogant and extremely cunning in the way he approaches us. His main focus is to draw us away from the presence of God and into his web of deceit. He never forgets his self appointed assignments to abort our destiny with Christ. He knows his job and does it well. It is our job as Christians to know Satan, understand his attributes and expose the tactics he uses to confront us. Satan is not timid and will face you in every area of your life with strategies to bring about total destruction. Once we expose Satan and understand his attributes, we can battle against him strategically. We will be aware when he rises against us and will be victorious in every confrontation. This is not a game. This, my friend is a full scale war against an enemy that preys on the children of God. He operates as a stalker to obtain knowledge of our every action and word we speak. It is our responsibility to recognize the warfare on a daily basis. Do we know him as well as he knows us? It is time to break the silence, come out of the darkness of secrecy and expose him! His greatest tactic is spiritual blackmail. He demands the ransom paid with our soul, but the ransom has already been paid by Christ as He was crucified, making us victorious in every confrontation and battle against Satan. In our engagement with warfare, we must realize that faith is not an emotion. Faith is an action and one of choice. Faith is the one gift that God provided for us in order to succeed in life with victory and confidence: The confidence in God’s power and love for us. It takes faith to become saved, it takes faith to obtain deliverance, and at times it takes faith to be victorious over the enemy. Soon we will learn that victory over our thought process is followed by victory over our emotions. Our mind must come into alignment with the will and promises of God. It is difficult for us to grasp what we cannot see, but that is faith in action. We literally begin exercising the gift of God. As we exercise our faith, we develop strength and power. Now, let’s exercise our power to expose the enemy, his attributes and confrontational strategies of warfare. As we begin to unveil the enemy, imagine the following scenario. You are in a battle, what seems like a blood bath of emotions and the attacks are becoming more strategic. You have attempted to build a massive wall around you to protect yourself from the enemy and to keep the artillery from penetrating your camp. You are being ambushed. You are being hit with bombs. The bombs and grenades are unexpected and unidentified. It has put a gap in the wall and now other bombs have easy access. While you are trying to repair the damage, a suicide bomber scaled the wall on the opposite side of the camp; the one on assignment to destroy you and cares not if he is wounded. While you are defending your wall, you realize fiery arrows carrying destructive messages have landed in your compound. You just extinguish the fires or repair the damage quickly enough. You are running and trying to gather your troops to battle but they have vanished. In the process of this ungodly war, you discover that the troops were injured and taken to safety. You feel you are alone to battle all of the enemies and the smoke of the war. Your hearing and vision are impaired, and your body and mind are exhausted. You begin to think the only option left is to surrender and let the enemy take over the camp. There is no use fighting anymore. The army against you is building and you hear the artillery fire up again and see them coming in the distance. The only thing left is to come to surrender to the circumstance you see and believe that you have fought a good fight, you have done all you knew to do to protect your wall and the soldiers around you. So this is it, defeat! BUT, just as you finish that statement, you feel the ground begin to rumble. You know something massive is about to take place. Fear overtakes you and you get ready to retreat as fast as possible. You begin to feel the pain of war and your wounds are bleeding. Suddenly, in the distance you hear a familiar voice. It is the voice of God. You still cannot see but feel yourself being removed from where you are. You are unaware of where you are going, but you are rejoicing that you survived the war. Your wounds are still fresh and bleeding, but help is on the way. You have been rescued from your wall and taken to safety. As you are leaving your walled camp you hear, “Well done soldier, you survived.” You are air lifted to a place of refuge, a place where you can recover and regain your mental state; an area where you can retrain and regain your composure for the next assignment. Unfortunately, you are taken to the desert. You are given all the provisions you need. You have shelter, food, water, medication, communication devices and a training manual. You have all you need to survive. You are not extremely comfortable, but you are out of the battle and the fire. So now what do you do? Do you sit and nurse your wounds, or do you realize what Satan has attempted to do and learn his tactics of war and the limited power he possess? It is time to grasp the reality that Satan’s power is limited to what we allow for him to obtain from us. His tricks are all the same. He comes to steal, kill and destroy the children of the Most High God. Satan will use the same tricks repeatedly with different faces of deception attached to him in order to confuse our mind and to cause us to lose focus of our power and authority through Christ. As we begin to recognize and understand the way Satan operates, we become victorious through the blood of Jesus Christ and will move into enemy territory with power and anointing to reclaim ALL things Satan has stolen. We must learn to identify the attributes of Satan in order to effectively recognize his strategy of war. With each attribute is a purpose for its attack. Once we begin to expose them, identify them in our mind and daily walk, his power decreases to non-existent status. The aggravation of the enemy will be there but its purpose will not be successful. Now, realize that the wall in the scenario is our soul and our mind. The bombs, grenades and propaganda are the lies of the enemy he spreads to convince us we are unstable and unable to fight effectively. The soldiers are our fellow Christians who were placed with us to battle against the enemy. We tend to get so engaged in war that we fail to realize we have friends around us to help fight against a loud, obnoxious, suicide ready enemy. The enemy knows his fate and wants to destroy you at all cost. Our wounds are emotional as well as spiritual. But when God comes on scene we are lifted out into victory to recover and learn from our experiences. When God shows up on our behalf, no matter what shape we are in, whether we are seeing clearly or not, he takes control over the enemy. The enemy knows when to surrender to a higher power and we need to learn the same lesson. When we let go of the control, our higher power, Jesus Christ, can take over and cause the earth to tremble at His presence. He is a mighty God who will allow us to go through warfare to make us stronger and prove His love for us.