Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Leads the World Astray

I am still working my way through Revelation and find that it is a difficult book of the Bible to me. Chapter 12 seems to be summarizing all of Biblical history with imagery and verse 9 says:

"The great dragon was hurled down - that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.  He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."

And thus Satan is here even today, leading the whole world astray.

It is a difficult concept for many people to grasp.  That Satan is real.  That he exists and there is a spiritual battle raging every day on earth.  The way I like to think about it is from one of Frank Peretti's novels in which Satan and his demons meddle with the characters' daily lives.  While the characters cannot see them, there are times when they are aware of a dark presence.

I know a novel is fiction, and so the book is Mr. Peretti's idea of how the spiritual battle works.  But for me it is a good image to keep in mind when I am going through my daily plans.  Satan's goal is to keep me from focusing my thoughts, actions and behaviors on God.  He wants to keep me from my goal of trying to be more like Jesus.  So when my little man is having a crying fit while brushing his teeth and there are only a couple minutes left before we need to leave for school, I have to focus hard on being like Jesus instead of just yelling at my little man.  I have to confess, I often do not succeed but with God's grace, I can keep trying.

Satan is scheming, every day, every hour, every minute to "lead the whole world astray" and from the looks of it, he is succeeding with so many people.  When I look around just at American society, it is amazing how far we have fallen from Scripture and from the precepts that our founding fathers founded our country on.

I pray that God will use me to spread His good news, His love, His kindness, His grace to our hurting country.

In His Grace...

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