The Devil: Defanged At Last I lay in bed with my head buried under the covers, shivering – and not from the cold. After a few moments I needed to come up for air, but did so very reluctantly. Ever so slowly I lowered the covers so as to see but not be seen. With lightening speed my eyes shot a fearful glance across the room toward where darkness seemed to emanate from the top shelf of my open bedroom closet. “Are you there?” A moment passed. Nothing. He’s gone. My tense body relaxed back down under the warm covers. “He’s gone,” I whispered. “But soon he may be back.” This is a window into the nightly drama lived by a pre-school boy growing up in a small town in Wisconsin. When I was very young my mother told me stories of how, as a little girl, she believed a gray wolf inhabited the upper shelf of her bedroom closet, and when night came on he would emerge to frighten her. She did not tell me these stories to scare me, but my four or five year old mind figured that if such a wolf lived in my mother’s closet, then he must live in mine as well. And, so, for a period of months, I did battle at night with the formidable terror and certain evil of the inevitable, albeit invisible, gray wolf in my closet. Of course, there was no wolf. Still, as a little boy the wolf seemed so real that it enslaved me to an unfounded fear. I had no reason to be afraid, yet I was. As we know, pre-school-aged children rarely have the capacity to distinguish between fiction and reality. This is a well-known fact in hell, giving rise to a thousand sordid stratagems used by the devil and his minions against the human race. It might not be such a threat if its potency was limited to pre-school children who will all one day grow out of the fear of closet monsters. But as we find in the Bible, the devil continues to use his craft of unfounded fear on us humans even decades after our childhood has passed. It would take many pages to list all the manifestations of fear we face in our daily lives. Fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of humiliation, fear of transparency, fear of pain, fear of illness, authority, responsibility, intimacy and isolation. These are just a few of the angles from which the devil aims his gun of fear at our hearts on a daily basis. Often the result is a bulls-eye – his dark bullet of fear travels into the core of our hearts and leaves us enslaved – paralyzed. Do we have hope for a defense against our enemy? Is there an antidote for fear? The Bible answers with a resounding “YES!” Were I writing to unbelievers, I would give only one course of action for defeating the foe ‘fear’. Romans 5:1-2 says “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” In other words, peace with God (the ultimate antidote to fear) is possible only for those who have been justified by placing their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Becoming a Christian breaks the chains worn by all unbelievers who from birth have been wired to live lives of fear – especially fear of death. Just listen to what Jesus did when He died in our place on the cross: “Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15) So, when Jesus saved you and me He not only broke the chains of fear we’ve been shackled to all our lives, but delivered a mortal wound to our jailer: the devil. Because of our salvation in Jesus, we are forever freed from the devil’s power to enslave us to fear. That’s good news! Our freedom from fear begins with salvation. But it doesn’t stop there. For the rest of our lives on earth, Jesus bids us live lives free from the fears that so commonly enslave the minds and emotions of the unbelieving world around us. He invites us to wage war daily against the often constant assault on our minds to give in again to fear. In 2 Corinthians 10 Paul tells us to “…take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” And in Romans 12 he urges us to “no longer conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind[s].” The battle against fear in the life of the believer takes place in the mind. It comes down to reminding ourselves what is true and false – what is reality and fiction. So, the next time I face a situation that makes me want to run and hide, I need to wage war against the temptation to be afraid by remembering what is true due to my relationship with God: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear… (Psalm 46:1-2a); …God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5); … And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love….There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear….” (I John 4:16-18). The reality of God in my life and the act of remembering His promise that fear was defeated on my behalf when Jesus died on the Cross defangs the devil of his potency to enslave my heart again to fear of any kind. The truth of God’s Word shows up the devil for who he really is. He’s not a fearsome monster able to kill me, but a crafty magician who can only try to scare me with fantasy fears. Because of Jesus, the devil has lost his fangs, and now his gruesome grin can do us no harm. His power to hurt us is gone! What fears are you facing today? What mirages of threat is the devil hanging in your face hoping to suck the joy, hope, energy and faith in God out of your life? Name them, look them in the face and unmask them for what they are. As our Lord surveys the earth today in search of His people, may He not find us cowering in a corner, cowed by a mirage. May He find us looking to Him in faith, courageously saying with the Psalmist: “May God arise, may His enemies be scattered; may His foes flee before Him. As smoke is blown away by the wind, may You blow them away…!” (Psalm 68:1-2a) |
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