Satan's Plan B

If Satan has a Plan B, then it stands to reason that he also has a Plan A. So let’s start with that.

As the great deceiver that he is, Satan’s first priority is to do anything he can to keep us from being saved in the first place. He doesn’t want us to have a personal relationship with Jesus. He doesn’t want us to draw close to our heavenly Father. Satan wants to be our father. He wants us to serve him.

Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
James 4:8 (NIV)

Satan will go to unthinkable lengths to keep us from getting saved

Lucifer will subtly twist the truth like he did when he was tempting Jesus in the wilderness. He even seems to be comfortable telling outright blatant lies that can easily be discredited by someone who has wisdom and knowledge. He’ll tell us that science proves the book of Genesis is just a fairytale and that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, but only fainted and later recovered. He’ll tell us anything that we might believe in order to steer us away from the truth.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

John 14:6 (NKJV)

Another tactic that Satan uses is to draw us into addictive behaviors that violate God’s laws. He makes sin look so appealing, doesn’t he? Satan will try to draw us into pornography knowing that it often leads to sexual affairs and broken families. He’ll tempt us to steal and cheat, and lie. He’ll tell us that life is short, so you’ve got to do whatever makes you happy. That's one of his biggest lies. Living our lives to satisfy only our own desires instead of living out God’s plan for us never leads to happiness. It might be fun for awhile until it ends up destroying our lives.

If he fails to steer us away from accepting Jesus Christ as the Lord of our lives, Satan pulls out his Plan B card, and boy is that card full of tricks. Here are some of them…

He’ll try to keep you busy and distracted

Satan has devised lots of ways to encourage us to waste our time instead of spending it with God and producing good fruit for His kingdom. I’ve always said that technology can be used for both good and evil. In many cases, it ends up being used for evil. For example, when the internet was first sprung upon the masses, the majority of websites were porn sites.

Today, it’s not unusual for people sitting at the same table to have their eyes and thumbs glued to their smartphones instead of socializing in person. And what about video games? It’s a fact that video game developers are experts at making their games addictive in order to keep you playing for hours and hours on end. When I was younger, I was so addicted to video games that I would sometimes stay up until 3 to 5 AM in the morning playing a game and then stumble into work like a sleep-deprived zombie. And then I discovered Facebook games. I know that many people are still addicted to them because I get requests from my Facebook friends all the time asking me to play a game with them. I never do because I finally decided that the only way for me to beat my video game addiction was to give up all video games cold turkey. So I did. It helped that my better half gave me a constant stream of reminders that I needed to put down that video game and do something else! I sure wish I had that time back so I could use it to serve the Lord, instead. Lesson learned.

These are just a couple examples, but you can already see that in this age of technology, Satan has many more tools at his disposal than ever before to help us waste our time. Don’t get me wrong, after all, I work for a software company so I know that software has also enriched our lives in many ways. It’s only when we become slaves to it or it causes us to sin that it’s a problem.

He’ll try to drive a wedge between you and God by encouraging you to sin

Here’s a snippet from the article “The Worthless” on Sapphires that explains this well.

A name of Satan in the Bible is Belial. It’s the Hebrew word for Bel-ya-al which means worthless. The devil isn’t just evil, he’s worthless. Evil is worthless.  Sin isn’t just sin, it’s worthless. The more you sin, the more it takes away your worth as a believer. It wastes your life, your time, your thoughts, your energy, and your walk. It takes you away from what you could and should be doing. The enemy wants to make your life worthless to nullify your calling. When you are sinning, you are not serving God or spreading salvation. You’re not praising or glorifying Him. You’re missing your calling, wasting your life – it’s worthless. Sin is not only a waste but waste is a sin. When we spend hours in front of the TV or watching the questionable entertainment, we could have been spending time with the Lord, reading the bible, or serving God. It’s a waste, a sin, it’s Belail. Stop wasting your life. The Lord gave His life so your life will be worth something. It is if you spend it with Him.

What we can do to thwart Satan’s plans

First, if you haven’t asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, let me encourage you to get alone and call out to God. If you don’t already know in your heart that the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob exists, ask him to reveal himself to you.

But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29 (ESV)

Train yourself to flee from sin (1 Corinthians 6:18). There’s nothing that I know of in this world that does a more effective job at driving a wedge between us and God than our sins. We don’t even need to go looking for it because sin has a way of finding us, thanks to our sinful nature and Satan’s willingness to test us at every opportunity.

Give up the things that are wasting your time. Ask yourself “does what I’m doing glorify God?” If the answer is no, then ask yourself “is what I’m doing a sin?” If it is, then you need to give it up. I realize that some people have been able to give up their addictions instantly after they’ve accepted Jesus as Lord, while for others it’s a process. If you’re having trouble giving up a sinful addiction in your life, pray earnestly about it. Go to prayer and ask God to help you to have the strength to give it up. Seek help from others and ask them to pray for you. Do whatever you need to do to get right with God.

If what you’re doing is not a blatant sin but its something that's taking the time you should be spending elsewhere, you need to seriously consider giving it up altogether or at least scaling it back. I’m not saying that you need to give up all your television shows or other activities that you love, but if you’re watching TV for hours on end every day then you need to ask yourself if there's something you should be doing for the Lord. If those TV shows, movies, or whatever cause you to have sinful thoughts, then I’d encourage you to get them out of your life, post haste. I know it's hard but Jesus never promised that following Him would be easy.

We’re all going to give an account to Jesus one day about what we did and didn’t do during our lifetime. I want to hear Him say the words that are recorded in Matthew 25:21.

His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
Matthew 25:21 (ESV)

God bless,
Daniel