Below are my notes for Not another Manic Monday published live on Facebook, Monday, October 29th. The video is below the written version. I pray you’ll join me on Mondays at 10 a.m. each week as I share in music and word what the Lord has laid on my heart. – Shari
Our scripture for today’s devotion is 1 Corinthians 15:57 “But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory though our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I get so tired of hearing the battles that Satan wins in the lives of our people. Not the people who are lost, but those that are saved. He defeats us through deception, discouragement and darkness.
Let’s talk about
The Power of Deception
One of my favorite pieces of journal art is the roaring lion I journaled in 1 Peter 5:8 where the verse reads Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.
You need to underline that in your bible “as a roaring lion. The devil is a faker! Jesus is known as the Lion of Judah. Satan wants to be lion, but he’s not. He walks around making noise, but he can do nothing that the Lord does not ordain. But we often hear the roar, and it stops our dance.
If Satan can incite fear or doubt in you by roaring in your ear that something bad is going to happen, or something good isn’t going to happen, he’ll do it, and we’ll buy it. Why? Because we give him a mane, when he truly doesn’t have anything more than a deceptive Halloween costume.
John 8:44 says that Satan is the father of lies, and yet we listen to him like he’s speaking truth.
He is the great deceiver and every time he makes us believe a lie he does a victory dance that should have been ours.
So what’s he been roaring in your ears. For me, he tells me every day that I’m forever going to be in the position that I’m in financially and physically. That’s my roaring lion.
If when we hear that roar, we’d imagine Satan in a cheap plastic lion mask, the roar would turn into a meow. Because that’s all the power he truly has.
The Power of Discouragement
It looks a lot like the power of deception, but discouragement is in the heart, deception is in the head because we try to reason with logic. Discouragement, at least for me, is a heart matter. Satan uses the things that I’m passionate about to tear me down.
He’ll do it through other people who will make comments that just cut me to the core. Maybe it’s about my appearance, or my family, or a project that I’m working on and it immediately causes me to want to throw my hands up in defeat.
One of the ways he’s been tearing at me lately is through my grandchildren. Reminding me every day that they are exposed to some of the wicked things that my mind would never have imagined through a nightmare at their age. And their literally seeing it through television, Youtube, friends at school and other means of the media.
I feel powerless and discouraged. This is not a plastic mask demon, this is a real live demon messing in the lives of people I love. So how do I take back the dance that Satan has been dancing with discouragement?
I give them to God believing that He has sent the power of angels to shield and protect my grandchildren.
Hebrews 1:13-14 says “But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent for to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?”
No angel sits on the right hand of God. Jesus Christ sits in that position. But, God, Creator of all has assigned ministering spirits to those who are heirs of salvation. Ha! That’s us! It only took one angels in 2 Kings 19:35 to kill 185,000 people. I’m pretty sure, my grandchildren’s guardian angel can take care of a few middle schoolers wanting to harm, or infest my grandchildren’s minds with garbage.
I can’t be with them every day, but I can trust that God will provide the protection they need. I have to, else Satan will do a dance every time I worry.
The Power of Darkness
1 John 1:5-7 reads This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
I witness it every day and would be a liar just like the scripture said if I didn’t acknowledge that good Christian people are exposing themselves to the darkness and pretend that it doesn’t affect them.
I was telling my teen class the other day about a time when the television was called “booger john” because people believed it to be evil. And that was in the days of Leave it to Beaver! Look what our minds are exposed to now. We truly deceive ourselves if we don’t think that everything we allow into our minds doesn’t affect us in either a negative or a positive way.
The news media has filled our minds with fear and deception and we’ve bought it hook line and sinker. We watch shows with sex and violence and those images are seared into our brains to be drawn upon when Satan wants to get our minds off godly things. I was sitting in church yesterday and a television show that I had watched (that’s geared toward children by the way) a marvel hero who, came into my mind, an ungodly scene that I should have never allowed into my mind, and Satan brought it up in church, or I did. I don’t want to give him full credit.
Who ever said the eyes are the windows to the soul, knew what they were talking about.
We have to fill our souls with more light than darkness.
Another quote says that knowledge is power. Well, yes but it needs to be godly knowledge, not all knowledge is good power.
We have to stay in the word of God and to weigh everything we’re told by scripture. Not just the parts we want to believe.
We cannot possibly make it through this life unscathed with just a Sunday service. Not to mention those people who don’t even attend on Sunday’s or they hit and miss. Satan has you in his cross hairs first thing Sunday morning and he’ll be dancing on your head by Tuesday afternoon like a chorus line if you don’t get some more word into you.
I’m glad you joined me today, but don’t let it stop here!
Devour the word this week and keep Satan from devouring you!