We
live in a world that is at the same
time glorious and tragic. It is a
wonderful world with so much that is
noble, pure and breathtakingly
beautiful; but it is also a fallen
world, a world shot through with
suffering and injustice, malice and
evil. God our heavenly Father
understands the evil we face as does
our Lord who taught us to pray these
words.
The
Lord of Glory humbled himself and
came among us. He shared our life,
experienced the pain of rejection,
hatred and grave injustice; he faced
the most excruciating death in order
to free us from the grip and power
of evil.
Hell
is the ultimate evil and our
heavenly Father knows, as we do not,
its depth and its horror. He gave
his only Son to rescue us from that
ultimate evil. God our heavenly
Father is the great deliverer, our
Saviour.
Despite their loveliness great
houses have always been vulnerable
to all kinds of troubles. They are
vulnerable to troubles from within,
from members of the family itself or
from those employed in the running
of the house, among whom may be
those who would deceive, steal or
even destroy the household. They are
also open to troubles from without,
from people who would break in and
help themselves to treasures,
antiques or important papers and
from those who would break in to
hurt or destroy.
In
the kingdom of heaven, as with a
great house, our happiness and our
security lies in knowing the dangers
we face and in being watchful and on
our guard. So, from the warmth and
wonder of our heavenly Father's
goodness to us and purposes for us,
we must turn to be forewarned of the
evil depths of our own hearts, of
the sheer hatred of evil people and
of the malice and cunning of Satan.
The
prayer, 'Deliver us from evil,' is
consistently found in the texts of
the gospel of Matthew and expands
the previous petition. We have
prayed that we might not be led into
overwhelmingly evil situations, now
we pray for protection and for
deliverance within them.
Firstly, our Lord taught us to plead
for rescue from the thoughts, words
and deeds that are conceived, spoken
and done almost before we realise
what is happening.
i)
'Deliver us from evil thinking.'
It was the great German reformer
Martin Luther who taught us that we
cannot stop the birds flying over
our heads, but we can stop them
nesting in our hair!
It
is the nature of these brilliant
things we call our brains to be
constantly turning over all kinds of
ideas, often quite unconsciously.
All sorts of ideas 'just arrive' but
it is our responsibility before our
heavenly Father to either develop
them or expel them. Brilliant ideas
and useless ideas; wonderful, godly
and selfless ideas or vile, evil and
destructive ideas are constantly
entering our conscious minds either
to be enjoyed, delighted in and
turned into action; or to be
rejected and thrown out.
These ideas are inspired by all that
we see, hear and feel. They are
inspired by our present situation or
by the lovely or terrible
experiences of the past; inspired by
our heavenly Father or thrown in
like a hand grenade by the evil one
to wreak destruction. However they
come to arrive, the kind of ideas
presented by our sub-conscious minds
will be influenced by what we feed
into them and by what we welcome
from them.
The
kind of birds overhead depend on
where we choose to walk. Walk in the
country in the early morning and you
may well be greeted by the skylark,
walk in the city square and mind the
pigeons, walk by the coast and watch
the gulls wheel and swoop over your
head. In the same way the kind of
ideas that flood into our minds
depend on where we put ourselves.
They are influenced by the kind of
people we mix with, the magazines
and papers we read, the films and
programmes we watch. All these will
influence the ideas that flood into
our minds. If you throw bread in the
city, you are inviting the pigeons
to settle. If you throw bread at the
coast, the gulls will be around you
in less than a moment.
We
may actively choose to restrict our
conscious thinking to all that is
good, honourable and worthy of
praise, as the apostle Paul urges us
to. Alternatively, we may invite
other 'birds' to settle. We may
welcome and revel in very negative
and destructive thoughts about
ourselves or about the motives and
intentions of those around us.
Allowing thoughts like these to grow
and develop lies at the root of so
many of the difficulties in our
relationships with one another.
By
our choice of cinema, television,
video and computer viewing our
sub-conscious minds are flooded with
very powerful images for good . . .
or for evil. We live in days when we
watch and regard as 'entertainment'
violence, vice and evil, but are
amazed and horrified when people put
the very fantasies we enjoy into
practice in the real world.
At
this more dramatic level, we may 'so
throw our bread' as to encourage our
sub-conscious minds to supply us
with unrestrained fantasies of
financial or political power, of sex
or of violent revenge. They will
respond accordingly, supplying ideas
to achieve our chosen end, be it
superglue in a neighbour's lock or
guns in school.
The
potential is within each of us, for
out of the heart comes all that is
pure, noble and lovely but out of
the heart comes also every evil
thought: unkindness, uncleanness,
theft, envy and murder. All these
come from within. Both Judas'
betrayal of his Lord and Hitler's
'final solution', the extermination
of the Jewish people, were once
'just a thought.'
'Lord deliver us from evil thinking,
rescue us from feeding and revelling
in that which is evil. Wake us up so
that we may recognise the poison of
evil thinking for what it is. Give
us strength, despite its
fascination, to turn it off, kick it
out, to scare away such 'birds',
before they 'nest' and become
destructive words or deeds, wreaking
havoc in our homes, our lives or our
society . . . Father, keep us from
evil.'
ii)
'Deliver us from evil speaking.'
A retired missionary was telling how
the Lord first challenged him. As a
lad of sixteen, he was with his
friends on a train. They were
'proving their manhood' by loudly
outdoing one another in foul
language. A man in the corner was
totally ignored but, as he left the
carriage, he very quietly said to
the future missionary, 'Young man,
if your heart is as evil as your
mouth, you are in very great
trouble.'
From
our lips escape too easily all kinds
of evil: words that are lying or
deceitful; words that crush and
destroy; words that are foul or
words that throw into the gutter
something that is holy or to be
cherished.
Too
many relationships are destroyed by
an unrecognised habit of evil
speaking! We are commanded to love
and build one another up and yet
self-centred, arrogant, critical and
destructive words so easily escape
our lips: 'What is the matter with
you!' 'You've done it again!'
'You're useless!' or in their
absence, 'He'll never be any good!'
'He's rubbish!'
'Lord set a watch on our lips,
keep us from evil speaking, to one
another and of one another.'
iii)
'Deliver us from evil deeds.'
Evil deeds may be done for all kinds
of hidden reasons. We may be blinded
to what we are doing by sickness, by
the heat of lust or of anger or by
an all consuming commitment to a
cause. In lust and in anger we only
think of ourselves. In the total
devotion to a political, racial or
religious cause it is all too easy
to lay aside the godly principles of
kindness, courtesy, justice and
mercy. We assume that belonging to
our group gives us the right to
treat other groups of people
unkindly, discourteously or with
contempt. We do to them what we
would not like done to ourselves.
The
Lord warned his disciples that they
would be persecuted and even put to
death by men who were really
convinced that they were doing it
'for God'. St. Paul was such a man
when, as Saul the zealous Pharisee,
he persecuted the Christian
believers. Many a man, like Saul,
has done terrible evil, believing it
to be right, because he has done it
for a political or religious
'cause'.
Harshness, hatred and persecution,
beatings, burnings, imprisonments,
shootings and bombings . . .
'Father, keep us from evil.'
Biologically, we are sexual beings.
For some this provides no challenge
at all to godly living. Others,
however, find themselves from time
to time driven by all but
overpowering sexual urges and
desires. In this fallen world we may
have a very heavy cross to carry.
Here is a prayer that, by the grace
of God, we may so manage ourselves
that we are kept from evil deeds.
In
the partnership of godly marriage
our heavenly Father has provided the
right setting to find human
fulfilment at every level. In
essence Christian marriage is the
commitment of a man and a woman
before God, witnessed by those who
know them best, that they will
faithfully and exclusively share the
whole of life together until death.
It
seems that social custom and current
legislation are increasingly keeping
otherwise committed couples from
godly marriage. Do we need to free
couples who are seeking the
commitment of marriage from the
great display and expense that
society currently demands of 'a
wedding'? Again, do we need to do
all we can to strongly encourage the
government, by its financial
legislation, to underpin godly
marriage rather than undermine it.
Sexual drive is like a fire. In the
hearth or boiler of our home it can
give warmth and comfort, whilst
outside of godly marriage, it can
burn like a fire out of control,
raging and driving all before it.
Unchecked and unmanaged, our sexual
urge and lust can drive us to all
kinds of evil. It can lead to all
sorts of ungodly partnerships; to
unfaithfulness within marriage and
to the breaking of other homes and
marriages by adultery. In the
extreme it can lead to perversion or
child abuse. Here is a prayer that
we may face our sexual nature and so
channel it that it burns only in the
God-given hearth of the marriage
partnership and does not become a
force for evil, destroying our own
and other people's lives.
'Father, whatever lies behind, help
us from now on to channel and manage
our strong passions and desires in
ways that please you. Keep us from
evil.'
Closely linked is that other wild
horse, anger. Anger is the
characteristic of the young man
which, wild and untamed, leads to so
much hurt and destruction. However,
'broken-in' and under control it can
enable us to stand with strong and
godly passion against oppression and
evil. It was in godly anger that the
Lord cleared the temple of thieving
money changers and crooked salesmen
who had made the house of prayer a
den of thieves. It was with godly
passion that William Wilberforce and
his colleagues fought for the
abolition of slavery. It is this
kind of godly anger that has driven
all the great social reformers.
Many of us are social creatures and
strongly need to belong to an
organisation, group or gang.
However, it is too easy to link with
a group where the pressure from our
peers is to do wrong, to do evil. In
youth it is so easy to be swept into
heavy drinking, the misuse of drugs,
theft or violence.
Scripture strongly warns us to avoid
being caught up in a crowd and swept
into doing evil.
To
provide for our social need, our
heavenly Father has given us a
'gang' or family. It is the
fellowship of his church and in it,
despite its many imperfections, we
are called to care about one
another, to forgive one another and
to encourage one another to work as
a team for his kingdom.
Holiness of living and true
discipleship are all about bringing
our natural and biological
inclinations, desires and lusts
under the lordship of Christ. It is
a matter of putting to death or
denying ourselves all that our
Father hates, or, as our Lord so
memorably put it, of taking up our
cross daily and following him.
'Lord God give us grace and patience
to bring our driving passions under
your control. Keep us from evil
thinking, evil speaking and evil
deeds.'
Secondly, our Lord taught us to
plead for rescue from evil from
without. To pray for rescue from
evil people, evil days and from the
evil one.
i)
'Lord, deliver us from evil men and
women.'
The driving force behind the desire
for leadership is the desire for
power; power over people, power to
influence and change lives, power to
rule and direct. Like so many
things, such power is two edged, it
can be channelled and used for great
good or it can be used for great
evil. Here is a prayer that our
heavenly Father would keep us from
using the authority entrusted to us
in our homes, at our work or in the
wider society for evil. It is also a
prayer that he would keep us safe
from those who are using a position
of power for evil.
The
evil abuse of power can be as close
at hand as a stronger brother or
sister, a parent, step-parent or
someone in a parent's place. It can
be a bully, a teacher, a lecturer or
someone at work. It can be the
leaders of a gang or organisation.
It can be evil people in senior
management, or indeed in government.
Evil
at home turns the place of love and
safety into a prison house of fear,
violence and abuse. At work, an evil
'boss', shop steward or group turns
a place of creativity into a place
of stress and abuse at every level.
In
the church evil men or women,
'wolves' as both our Lord and the
apostle Paul call them, may be
charming, eloquent and persuasive as
they gain power over us, 'relieve'
us of our money or lead us astray
theologically or morally.
In
society, where at best we support
and encourage one another, how
unthinkably terrible it is to come
under the power of terrorists or to
be under a death threat from evil
religious extremists, caught up by a
violent gang, or hemmed in by an
organised crime ring. We do well to
thank God daily if we know nothing
of such things and to pray that he
would keep us safe. We need to cry
to God daily if we find ourselves,
or know of fellow disciples, trapped
by such evil, at home, at work or in
the wider society.
Sometimes, 'Deliver us from evil'
will be a cry for godly wisdom,
strength and protection within a
terrible situation. Sometimes it
will be a prayer for courage and a
godly way of escape, for the New
Testament unashamedly urges us to
escape from evil oppression.
Sometimes it will be a prayer for
those we know who are caught up in
evil.
Sometimes this petition will be a
cry from the heart as far-reaching,
perhaps national, choices, decisions
and appointments are made. 'Lord,
spare us from evil leaders and from
evil laws.' For nationally, too, we
do well to pray that our heavenly
Father would keep us from evil. How
terrible it was for godly men and
women to be caught up under Hitler
and the Nazi regime on the far right
of politics, or under Stalin and the
Communists on the far left. How
almost impossibly hard it is for a
Christian, especially for a
Christian leader, to live for the
Lord under an evil regime be it
atheistic or religious. 'Lord,
deliver us . . .'
'Father deliver us . . .' can also
be a cry, from within an evil
situation, to deliver us from the
natural anger and resentment that
wells up in our own hearts towards
those who threaten and abuse us - in
itself an evil that would destroy
us. From the prison camps have come
many accounts of those who, by the
grace of God, have learned to rise
above the malice and hatred of the
camp and be free before God to pray
for, and even to love, those who
taunted and persecuted them.
The
Lord's Prayer is not about sweet
sentiment. It is about the glorious
and terrible reality of living for
our heavenly Father in this fallen
and often evil world. It is an
essential prayer for safety and
deliverance for ourselves, our
families, our land and our fellow
disciples throughout the world.
'Lord deliver us from evil men and
women in positions of power, and
from our own ungodly response to the
evil we experience in our day by day
living.'
ii)
'Lord, deliver us from, and in, the
evil day.'
The evil day is the day of personal
or social calamity. 'Lord, spare us
that we may live free and unfettered
lives for you' - for the day of
calamity narrows our vision so that
we strive only for our own survival.
The
evil day is the day we hear from the
doctor that our remaining days are
very short. It is the day of
domestic calamity; the day we learn
the terrible truth of trust
betrayed, or witness the sudden
death of those we had loved with all
our heart. Although we must all walk
through the valley of the shadow of
death, it is the promise of our
heavenly Father to walk with us. We
need fear no evil. Nevertheless we
are taught to pray that our Father
would spare us from such
overwhelming evil.
Evil
days can touch a whole nation; days
of financial ruin, days of famine or
days of war with the accompanying
loss of home, loss of loved ones,
loss of everything. The whole book
of Job wrestles with such evil days;
days of utter calamity.
'Father we thank you for every day
that you spare us from these things.
Things that, in this fallen world
may touch our lives at any time.
Help us to use the good days you
give us for the honour of your name
and walk closely with us through the
dark days. By your grace, bring us
safely through them.'
References
'Good, honourable' etc. -
Philippians 4:8
'Theft, murder, envy' etc. - Mark
7:21-23
Murder, 'for God' - John 16:1-3
Saul persecuting Christian believers
- Acts 8:1-3 & 1 Timothy 1:12-15
Clearing the temple - Luke 19:45&46
In a crowd bent on evil - Exodus
23:2
'Wolves' - Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:29,
2 Peter 2:1-3
Escape evil oppression - Mark 13:14
With us in the valley of the shadow
- Psalm 23
Questions
Our thoughts
1 Would it be good if all the
thoughts that pass through our minds
were known to those around us?
2 What kind of negative and
destructive thoughts, allowed to
grow and develop, might destroy
ourselves, our home lives or our
working relationships?
3 How do we feed our minds? How do
we regard the fantasy world of the
magazine, television or computer?
4 How can we control what we think
about?
Our words
5 How evil are our mouths? Do we
cheapen godly or precious things by
the way in which we speak?
6 Do we use our words to encourage
and build up or to crush and
destroy?
Our deeds
7 Saul persecuted the early
Christian believers out of religious
zeal. Are there people that we
despise or treat unfairly? How can
we keep ourselves from such evil?
8 Can our strong sexual passions
lead us to do evil?
9 What has our heavenly Father
provided to be the right place for
passionate love and to keep us from
such evil?
10 What good and what evil can come
from anger? Can you name some
examples?
Other people
11 How deep in human nature is the
desire for power?
12 Can you think of examples in
which people have used their power,
a) for great good, b) for great
evil?
13 How much are we aware or
concerned about our fellow disciples
who are being evilly oppressed?
14 How natural is it to return evil
for evil, hatred for hatred? How can
we begin to cope?
Evil days
15 Why and how does the evil day
narrow our vision?
Deliver us from evil, continued . .
. the one who would destroy
A
heart that readily wells up with
evil dreams and plans, flesh that
delights in them, a fallen world
that brings to us all kinds of evil
days, people, circumstances and
opportunities . . . and in the
shadows, hiding behind all these
things is Satan, the evil one. In
scripture he is also described as
the deceiver and the destroyer. In
the Lord's Prayer it is legitimate
to translate, 'deliver us from
evil,' 'deliver us from the evil
one.' We wrestle not only with flesh
and blood but with mighty, deceptive
and destructive spiritual forces
under the evil one.
Satan
and temptation
Satan is the master of his art. His
constant aim is to cause us to
stumble. Behind Job's terrible
trials was Satan seeking to cause
Job to curse God to his face. Behind
Peter's terrible night, as he found
himself denying his Lord, was Satan
seeking to cause Peter to fall. Yet
on the surface, all could be
accounted for by personal
weaknesses, by the pressure and
persuasion of the people around them
or by the circumstances in which
they found themselves.
All sorts of people will be employed
in a great house, each of them
carefully selected for their
particular role. Yet, occasionally,
beneath the courteous exterior may
lie great danger; a servant or
servants with a hidden agenda,
servants whose secret loyalties lie
elsewhere and whose actual aim is to
destroy the household. And so it is
with the kingdom of God.
We
are guests in our heavenly Father's
world and yet Satan, a fallen
servant of God, will constantly
tempt us, both individually and
together as groups, races and
nations, to grasp, take and
recklessly exploit this world for
ourselves. Again, God has commanded
us to care for one another, yet we
will be constantly tempted to use
and exploit one another.
How would you handle it if, when
staying as a guest in a great house,
you were to be approached by a
servant who privately invites you to
his office. With great skill and
charm he shows you an apparently
genuine document that indicates
that, if you follow his
instructions, the whole property
could become yours. He suggests that
your rights are being denied you.
Just as you have been invited to
share openly in the life of the
family, now, by treachery, you are
invited to claim for yourself
whatever you will. You turn your
back and try to forget it, but the
idea will not go away. You have new
eyes. All that was previously
offered to be innocently appreciated
and enjoyed, could now be yours for
the taking.
This
is exactly the picture given to us
in the third chapter of Genesis.
Satan suggests that God's commands
are irksome and restricting; that
God is denying a basic 'right',
namely, to do as we will, to be as
gods. Satan now offers this 'right'
for the taking. He tempts us to
break free from God and do as we
will. Here is Satan's basic ploy.
See how he uses it again and again.
Satan
and society
In modern Western culture, with our
great Christian heritage, perhaps
the most effective way in which the
evil one has been at work is by way
of ungodly liberal thinking. Here is
a way of thinking that cuts free
from God and his fatherly commands
and instructions. By it Satan has
been able to bring our godly
heritage all but tumbling down.
Liberal thinking has laid aside
absolute, godly moral values, such
as the Ten Commandments, and
replaced them with a whole sea of
relative values. These are human
values that simply depend on current
social thinking, the circumstances
in which we find ourselves, or on
the whim of a ruling party or
dictator. Such thinking is always
presented very plausibly and
forcefully and yet it has exposed us
to a flood of evil right across
society.
In
Britain, ungodly liberal thinking
underlies the throwing off of godly
ways and a sliding back into old and
pagan ways right across the moral
spectrum. Godly chastity before
marriage and faithfulness within it
are being displaced by a widespread
thinking which regards the exclusive
and lifelong commitment of marriage
as of little importance, stable
partnerships being the normal
pattern. It is a way of thinking
that can lead to the collapse of
godly family life, and unltimately
to the collapse of society.
How
far will we slide? Roman society
women dated the year by the name of
the then current partner. Indeed,
the ancient Romans accepted any
partner, homosexual or heterosexual,
at any time - with children of mixed
parentage loosely attached along the
way. But, for our encouragement,
this was the very seedbed or cradle
of the New Testament church.
In
Roman times, Christian disciples
were a people with a new and
distinctive way of living. However,
the effect in our own days of
declining godliness is, firstly, to
make appear 'very odd' those
Christian disciples 'still living'
our heavenly Father's narrow but
best way and, secondly, to alienate
great swathes of people, who have
nothing against the church, but find
themselves excluded from it by the
way in which they choose to live.
There is a very great social cost
attached to the prevailing godless
way of thinking. It has undermined
the family, offering 'equally valid'
alternative lifestyles, but they are
lifestyles that tend to the breaking
down of society. These liberal
lifestyles have produced, often not
of their own choosing, many more
single parents and homeless
teenagers. This flows from the
casual nature of modern parenting
partnerships where one or the other
may move on or be replaced, and
youngsters find that the new
relationship in some way excludes
them. This casual or uncommitted
approach has also given us a
spiralling tax burden that the rest
of society must pay to care for
those who are no longer in
economically efficient, mutually
supporting families.
This
tide of secular thinking has also
destroyed so much that was orderly,
good and godly in the education of
our young people. It has added to
godly honest dealing a range of
'creative' financial approaches. It
has brought into medicine what is in
practice abortion on demand, the
'right' to destroy a dependent life
that is not wanted, a way of
thinking naturally to be extended to
euthanasia. It has filled our
society with groups demanding rights
of every kind, and has largely taken
away the sense of personal
responsibility or duty. In short,
ungodly liberal thinking has brought
with it a whole rising tide of evil.
And behind it, Satan smiles as he
sees the godly values in our society
being steadily undermined.
'Father, spare us, rescue us from
evil. Turn us again as a nation to
hunger after that which is godly and
to leave behind that which is evil.
Raise up godly men and women who
will stand against the tide of evil.
Help us to pray as you would have us
pray, not to pray and wring our
hands in impotent lament, but to
pray and then, with courage, play
our part. May your name be honoured,
your kingdom come, your will be
done.'
For many years our heavenly Father
has protected this country from
evil, surrounded it and kept it
safe, but how can we expect the
continued blessing of God in this
privileged way and yet turn our back
on him? Disciples of Christ need
earnestly to pray, 'Keep us from
evil. Deliver us from the evil ways
and evil influences to which we as a
nation, in our God-forgetting and
all-tolerant way, have laid
ourselves wide open.'
Satan
and the church
Within the church the strategies of
the evil one have been very
effective. By the same ungodly
liberal thinking, he has undermined
true faith in great sections of the
church, offering well-presented
human teaching which displaces the
teaching of our Lord and his
apostles. By this thinking, for
example, he has torn apart the
church over the central issues of
Christian belief, over the ministry
of women and the acceptability of
homosexual practice.
In
our worship, Satan, the deceiver,
delights to replace sincerity of
heart and holiness of life with
splendour of ceremony or with heat
of emotion.
In
our fellowships, at every
opportunity, Satan, the destroyer,
sows those fast-growing weeds of
mistrust, discord and envy. How we
need to be constantly on our guard,
praying that 'we may agree in the
truth of God's holy word and live in
unity and godly love'; testing all
we hear and read against the plain
teaching of scripture, and actively
guarding our fellowship with one
another. Satan delights both to lead
us astray and to divide us. He
delights to see the church, at the
local level and at the national
level, destroying itself.
Satan
and ourselves
In our individual lives, the evil
one plays on our anxieties, fears
and hardness of heart in order to
undermine or destroy our walk with
our heavenly Father and our walk
with our fellow disciples. This
world really is a spiritual
mine-field!
Satan works indirectly through
material wealth, pleasure, anxiety
or the pressures of life, to make us
forgetful, fruitless and cold
towards the things of God. It is for
these reasons that it is so hard for
the successful person, modern and
materialistic, to enter the kingdom
of heaven. It is for these reasons
that young Christian disciples, who
begin so full of vision and passion
for God, end up in middle-life cold,
indifferent and fruitless. 'Father,
keep us from evil.'
Satan works more directly as the
destroyer as he presents ideas and
convictions that would wreck our
walk with our heavenly Father or our
usefulness in his service. The
recorded temptations of our Lord are
exactly of this pattern. Each,
though presented as apparently
highly desirable, would have either
destroyed him or his work. He was
tempted to use his authority and
power to gratify his personal need,
at that moment his hunger. He was
tempted to commit a spectacular
suicide and so destroy himself. And
finally he was tempted, in the
privacy of the moment, to gain all
he desired at the price of becoming
a double agent, a secret servant of
Satan.
We
will face similar times of testing.
For us, the temptations of Satan can
be presented as the persuasive
argument of an atheist, the advice
of a 'friend', or simply a 'gut
feeling'. The 'sudden resignation
syndrome' is a typical response to
satanic attack. A faithful disciple
doing a useful work and keen to walk
closely with their heavenly Father,
is suddenly convinced that it is
God's will that they should give up
- and they do so, without warning
and without handing over to others.
The work is weakened if not
destroyed and Satan, the destroyer
and great deceiver, has scored a
hit. Beware of sudden overwhelming
convictions of this kind! Our
heavenly Father is a God of order
not of chaos. We can walk with him
in quietness and in confidence.
More
rarely, but dramatically, Satan
works as the destroyer through
tricks of the mind. He is sometimes
behind quite overwhelming and
terrifying thoughts of destruction,
both of ourselves and of those
around us. Fiery darts indeed, to be
recognised by their sudden force and
destructiveness. Our heavenly Father
does not shout at us! So if, when
you are under great stress,
depressed or just very tired, you
feel a strong prompting to 'Finish
it all, throw yourself in front of
this train,' - hold fast. If it is,
'I could kill you,' - hold fast. If
it is, 'Drive into the ditch, now,'
- keep steady. Or, in the early
hours you might wake from a dream
with a mind filled with the most
unthinkable scenes of violence or
vice, from which you recoil in
horror. Such things are by no means
uncommon, but they are not of God.
'Lord, deliver us from evil. Keep us
safe, keep us steady.'
Even
more directly, if we have in some
way played into Satan's hands, we
may find ourselves or come across
others who are directly under the
influence, even control of the evil
one. We can so easily bite on his
bait for it is always presented so
attractively. As a former generation
put it, 'Satan's delicacies are
always served on silver salvers.' It
is so desirable to know the future;
to have hidden powers; to be in
touch with the spirits; to be in
contact with those we have lost
through death. Yet to pursue any of
these is to bite on Satan's bait.
We
are involved in spiritual warfare
where powerful spiritual agencies
would enthrall us, ensnare us and
enlist us for their own ends and
purposes. They may offer us 'the
world', as Satan offered our Lord.
They may offer all we could desire
as Satan offered in the garden, but
the aim is always to lure us from
single hearted loyalty to our
heavenly Father. Is this a warning
to us of the possible, hidden danger
behind an invitation to join a
secret brotherhood or lodge, or even
behind certain job or financial
offers?
Said
the Lord to Peter, 'Pray that you do
not fall into temptation.' Peter
slept well - and fell. It is not for
nothing that our Lord taught us to
pray, 'Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.'
The early chapters of Genesis tell
us that, after their fall, both the
man and the woman hid themselves.
After such an encounter with Satan's
temptation, whether we fall or not,
it takes very great courage to come
to our heavenly Father in honest and
open confession. It takes great
courage to lay before him all the
circumstances that led up to such a
sore temptation and all the
subsequent thoughts of our hearts
and deeds of our bodies. To make
such a confession is the very last
thing we would choose to do. To
hide, belittle or cover it all over
seems a much more attractive
proposition. And yet our Father does
not look on the outward appearance
of respectability but on the heart.
In the kingdom of heaven there are
no hidden secrets and there are no
double agents.
If we have been caught by the evil
one we need to cry to our heavenly
Father for mercy. Deliverance and
forgiveness are freely available,
they have been purchased for us by
the cross of the Lord Jesus. To be
given them demands very courageous
openness with our heavenly Father,
from whom nothing is hidden. It
takes great courage, but, for those
who dare, for those who come to him
hiding nothing, he has promised
forgiveness and a fresh new start.
The wonderful truth is that there
are no depths of evil, into which we
may have fallen, from which the
grace of God cannot rescue us
'Father, have mercy on us, deliver
us, rescue us. Keep us safe from
evil, evil from within and evil from
without. Keep us safe from the evil
one with all his subtlety and with
all his skill. Keep us safe from
evil people. Keep our lips from
speaking evil, be it foul or
destructive. Deliver us from
thinking evil, dwelling on evil,
doing evil.'
References
Wrestling with mighty spiritual
forces - Ephesians 6:12
Satan behind Job's temptation to
curse God - Job 1:9-11
Satan behind Peter's fall - Luke
22:31-34
Satan behind the temptations of our
Lord - Matthew 4:1-11
'In quietness and confidence' -
Isaiah 30:15
Warning to Peter - Luke 22:39-46
God looks on the heart - 1 Samuel
16:7
Questions
1 To what extent does Satan keep in
the shadows?
2 Why do moral values that are not
anchored to godliness drift? What
anchor has God our Father given us?
3 Why will true disciples appear
increasingly 'odd' in an ungodly
society?
4 Why might it encourage us to know
that the ancient Roman Empire was
the seed bed of the Christian
church?
5 In what ways does ungodly thinking
undermine the family? Are there
costs, of different kinds, to the
children, wider family, community
and state?
6 In what way have you seen Satan
play the secret destroyer among
disciples in the church?
7 Do we need to be personally
watchful? For what kind of things,
situations and people?
8 How can evil creep up on us until
we are all but spiritually dead, or
at least fruitless?
9 Do we need to be aware and praying
much more for one another: that we
may recognise and resist Satan's
fiery darts?
10 In what ways might we play into
Satan's hands?
11 How will the fact that true
disciples are caught up in spiritual
warfare affect the way in which we
live?
12 'No hidden secrets or double
agents' - Why is it so hard to
openly confess? What encouragement
is there to do so?
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