Category Archives: Sizing up the Enemy

Good leadership is crucial to winning battles. Our leader is Jesus, the head of the body (Colossians 1:18); we have the superior leadership. But our lines of communication with Jesus are often poor. Many Christians rarely read or study the Bible, where God clearly teaches his battle plan. And following the subtle, inner leading of the Holy Spirit isn’t easy for carnally minded Christians who don’t even remember to pray.

In practice, God usually leads through human delegates, and this becomes a major difficulty. Human leaders frequently are corrupt and self-serving. Lying, instability, hypocrisy, and misdirected ego-trips characterize far too many.

Satan also is an excellent leader, consistently guiding his forces to victory. He also has direct communication with his fellow-spirit beings, and they understand what he says.

Satan has the freedom to cheat. The fact that Satan is not constrained by ethics can be a significant advantage. Total pragmatism—winning at any cost and by any means—is had to combat. We, on the other hand, have to wage war according to God’s rules. In human combat, always telling the truth would be unthinkable, deceiving your enemy is a crucial wartime operation. Satan does this all the time, but we don’t have the freedom to lie. While we wouldn’t have much chance of deceiving him anyway, we could deceive his human servants if we were permitted. He uses manipulation and intimidation to good effect, but these are out of bounds for us as well.

We are not to play into the culture’s popular desires but instead generally confront people with a message they find offensive. Satan is free to tell them exactly what they want to hear. He promises them the very thing they desire even though he has no intention of delivering.

God won’t overrule human free will in most cases; he waits for a choice from feeble humans at multiple. But Satan won’t hesitate to enslave people and overtake them to various extents, even without their knowledge. In a word, God often forbids us to do the pragmatically useful thing and instead calls us to forfeit results for the sake of faithfulness to him.

Staying alert is important in war, whereas an unexpected move (such as Pearl Harbor) often brings defeat. Many passages on fighting with Satan stress the need for alertness (Acts 20:31; 1 Corinthians 16:13; Ephesians 6:18; Colossians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:6 1 Peter 5:8), but this is a sore spot for most Christians. We might be alert at certain times, but usually we’re preoccupied by other interests. Some are so preoccupied they “forget” for months at a time that a war is going on! Satan’s forces have no other interests. While they may be surprised at times, this appears infrequent, and they seem to adjust quickly.

One time remember someone in our church reaching out to this man. The new believer turned out to be very influential, and within a few weeks a dozen others had come to Christ or were close to faith in this group of men. But Satan rapidly enticed one leader to fall into an affair and another to fall into drugs. Then he set them against each other, and within another week the group of men disintegrated and disappeared. The leaders forgot they were in a war and needed to stay alert. The new recruits were destroyed.

All firsthand accounts of battle emphasize how terrifying it is. Seeing friends cut down on every side is unnerving. But Satan’s forces are fearless. They come, and they keep coming, no matter what happens. Any local victory we score will be answered quickly by another attack. Casualties are common in the church. How jolting it is to see believers you thought would never falter fall apart completely.

Relentless pressure like this becomes demoralizing to fearful people like us. Humans tend to keep score and to lose heart when they’re behind. But the demons don’t seem to care how often they lose—they remain just as determined during times of victory. Satan capitalizes on fear, often convincing Christians that their struggle is hopeless, and this is particularly true in groups that are aggressively doing God’s work. While do-nothing groups may live in comparative serenity, active, forward-moving groups can expect a relentless battering.