We have an enemy whose goal is to destroy our ability to see ourselves the way God sees us.

Look in the mirror long enough, and it’s easy to pick apart the things you see. It starts with your looks, moves to your abilities, then your worth, your purpose, and before long it’s hard to know why anyone even gives you the time of day. The condemning voices certainly are convincing voices. But they aren’t God’s. God calls Gideon—an unassuming, and formerly nameless Jewish boy—a “mighty warrior”. And God calls us—just as unassuming, and sometimes nameless—His. Imagine if students left middle school and high school believing that. Imagine if we, as adults, started living like we knew that. Do we let the Enemy’s voice skew our thoughts and twist our value? Or do we trust God’s freeing declaration that in Him, we are enough? We are worthy? We are accepted? Then what would it take to start acting like it?

We have an enemy whose goal is to destroy our ability to see ourselves the way God sees us.

Look in the mirror long enough, and it’s easy to pick apart the things you see. It starts with your looks, moves to your abilities, then your worth, your purpose, and before long it’s hard to know why anyone even gives you the time of day. The condemning voices certainly are convincing voices. But they aren’t God’s. God calls Gideon—an unassuming, and formerly nameless Jewish boy—a “mighty warrior”. And God calls us—just as unassuming, and sometimes nameless—His. Imagine if students left middle school and high school believing that. Imagine if we, as adults, started living like we knew that. Do we let the Enemy’s voice skew our thoughts and twist our value? Or do we trust God’s freeing declaration that in Him, we are enough? We are worthy? We are accepted? Then what would it take to start acting like it?

For a long time when I heard the word “Satan” or “devil,” I had a very grade-B horror movie image come to mind. Isn’t that typically how we imagine this Prince of Darkness? Hard to take seriously, tough to see as a real threat, someone you are more inclined to see as a bunch of smoke and mirrors, an illusion that may have been scary at one point, but is much less believable in the 21st century? It can be challenging to give serious consideration to the idea of a red man with pointy ears ruling a sulfurous and fiery cavern under the earth.

So let’s not. Scratch that picture. Those pictures don’t make for good movies, and they don’t make for good reality either. Consider this instead. What if the Enemy, what if Satan was much more like the really scary movies, the ones that make you sleep with the light on? What if you threw out the idea of ghosts and goblins and opted instead for a picture much more realistic, but much more threatening, much more intentional?

You can thank a guy named Dante who wrote The Divine Comedy for coming up with the modern picture/image we have of the devil. The Bible itself doesn’t have much to say when it comes to the appearance of the Enemy, but he shows up in Scripture at the beginning, the very beginning, in Genesis. Are you familiar with the tree, the fruit, the snake and the bite that changed it all? And while that may mark one of his longer cameos on the pages of Scripture, his story doesn’t end there.

We learn lots about him simply by reading what other people say about him. His name itself is quite telling. Satan means “accuser”. If he has one objective, it is to accuse you, to accuse me and to accuse God. The apostle Peter refers to the devil as a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

Jesus had some strong words to describe the Enemy and those who listen to his voice: “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!” (John 8:44-45 NIV).

In the Bible, there’s not one mention of a tail. Not one reference to a pointy goatee and eyebrows. Interesting. It is easy not to take that storybook image seriously, but much harder to dismiss the idea of someone out there is has made me his target, who’s objective is to deceive me, accuse me and destroy me.

C.S. Lewis, one of Christianity’s greatest modern thinkers said this, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” I think that for far too long we have let the image of Halloween costumes with red plastic masks and rounded off pitchforks define the image we have of Satan. We dismiss him as childish, outdated and no longer relevant. We start to, as Lewis suggests, disbelieve.

And this can be dangerous. We’ve all seen the movies where the telling music, the darkened rooms, and the oblivious soon-to-be victim falls prey to the manipulative and strategic moves of the villain. The longer we act like there is no Enemy, there is no threat, there is nothing to be concerned about, the more prone we are to be caught-off guard, to be lured unknowingly into Satan’s traps.

In 6th century BC a Chinese treatise was written called The Art of War. It is considered to be one of the oldest books on military strategy, and one of the more famous quotes it is credited with is, “know your enemy”. I think the proverb could apply to us as well. We need to know our Enemy. We first need to be willing to acknowledge he exists. Then we need to learn how he works. What are his tactics? What is he known for doing? What has he done in the past, and how is that a predictor for how he will act in the future? Where are you vulnerable? Where do you need protection? How well do you know the Enemy? It may be that you need to take another look, and live a little bit more alert of his workings and his intentions.

We need to be motivated in finding the balance between the two errors Lewis refers to—to disbelieve, and to over credit. We can’t walk around like there is a boogey man around every corner, but neither can we live clueless to the Enemy’s goal for our lives. It is a delicate balance, but it is something we need to care enough about to find, otherwise we lose. Too little attention to the Enemy makes us more susceptible to his plans for us, too much attention and we live more focused on him than on Christ, distracted from the purpose God has for us. The idea is to learn to live aware of a real and dangerous Enemy, but not to live in fear. To live with Satan’s objective in mind, but not to live paralyzed. To live with an understanding of the spiritual realm at work around us, but not to live dominated by the drama. Live like you know your Enemy.


Questions:
• What kind of picture comes to your mind when you hear the word “Satan”?

• Do you take that representation of him seriously? Why or why not?

• When you start to view the Enemy the way Scripture describes him (for example, John 8:43-45 and 1 Peter 5:8), how does that change the way you perceive him?

• How would “knowing your Enemy” change the way you live in light of the existence of Satan?

We have an Enemy whose goal is to destroy our trust in God.

Most of us can recall a time when the Enemy’s voice lured us into a temptation that appeared too good to resist. On the other side, we see the error of our ways, but at the time, the whispers seemed impossible to ignore. The lies and the deception we are so quick to believe often have to do with the character of God. Is He holding out on me? Does He want me to be miserable? Are all of these rules keeping me from being truly happy? And the Enemy steadily and stealthily whispers, “Yes.” Our battle with the Enemy comes down to this one thing—whose voice do we trust? Are we willing to surrender a sense of wonder in our big God for the voice of empty promises coming from the one who is set on our destruction? In our own lives, whose voice do we allow to get the last word?

It’s no secret that middle school and high school students are dealing with identity issues.
They want to know who they are, why they matter and where they fit in. The trouble is that while their natural self-awareness is heightened, comments that are intended for discipline and correction are easily interpreted as personal character attacks.

Maybe this sounds familiar? You are frustrated because your son brought home a progress report showing multiple homework zeros. You try to correct him, but he gets defensive and starts telling you that he’s sorry he’s not smart enough for you or sorry you think he’s such a worthless son. Maybe nothing so dramatic has happened in your house, but that doesn’t mean the potential isn’t there—it may be just under the surface.

Discipline and correction are an important part of parenting, and they sometimes seem almost impossible with a teenage son or daughter. But don’t give up. Your child needs you to be involved and alert to what is happening in his or her life, and actively correcting behaviors that could lead your child to places he or she doesn’t want to be. However, the language you use when correcting him or her can make a big difference.

Because we are human, we are wired to react to our children out of frustration when we see them making choices that are inconsiderate, lacking in self-control or potentially self-destructive. When we respond this way, we often make “you are” statements: You are so lazy. You are so selfish. Or we will make broad sweeping “you never” and “you always” statements. What we really intend as correction ends up sounding a whole lot more like an attack on the value and worth of our child.

Understand, we all do it. It’s just a natural reaction to the frustration and hurt we feel as we navigate the tumultuous waters of adolescence with them. But there are better words for us to choose.

This month, try to be especially alert to the words that you use when correcting your son or daughter. You may need to allow yourself time to step back from a particular situation before you enter into a correctional conversation. That’s okay. You can let your child know you are going to discuss it after dinner, or tomorrow when you come to pick them up from school. Then when you do have the conversation, try to use specific language to address the behavior that you want to correct. You can think of it as using “You are doing” statements. Words that let them know that while what they have chosen to do or say in this particular instance is not okay, that doesn’t affect who they are, how you love them and whether you believe the best about them.

When you are intentional about the words you use when you discipline, you can have a positive impact on your son or daughter’s self-image and also help them make wiser choices.

This is going to sound weird, but every one of us hears voices in our heads. It’s the voices that say, “Life would be easier if only I could or had . . . ” It’s the voices that whisper when we look in the mirror or compare ourselves to someone else. These voices are trying to lead each one of us somewhere, but is it somewhere we really want to go? Or is there a better voice to follow? Yes, there is a voice that has our best in mind. A voice that knew us before we uttered our first cry. A voice that is designed not to bring out the worst in us, but the best.