Halloween: Resisting Satan, Part 2

Note: I’ve developed this two-part mini-series from Chapter 7 of my book, Soul Physicians. Read Part 1 to learn how to defeat Satan’s seducing strategy number one—Enticing Us to Distrust God’s Good Heart.

Seducing Strategy Number Two: Enticing Us to Trust Our Own Heart

Doubting God inevitably leads to trusting self. Imagine what might have happened had Adam and Eve cried to God between Genesis 3:6 and 3:7. In Genesis 3:6 they eat the forbidden fruit and their fall is complete. In Genesis 3:7 they realize their nakedness and cover their shame on their own. I imagine a God-dependent response looking something like this.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. Standing exposed as failed and flawed male and female, naked before him with whom they have to deal.

Then the naked man and the naked woman heard the song of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, as he always had for fellowship. And they stayed.

Adam cried out to God, “I am unworthy to be called your son, for I have sinned against you in my self-sufficiency. I have failed to be the courageous man you designed and called me to be. I have been a coward rather than a protector. Make me like one of your animals, for I am soul-less.”

Eve cried out to God, “I am unworthy to be called your daughter, for I have sinned against you in my self-sufficiency. I have failed to be the completing woman you designed and called me to be. I have poisoned rather than nourished. Make me like one of your animals, for I am soul-less.”

Instead, the LORD God slew the precious animals he had handcrafted. He shed blood. Carefully, tenderly, with tears streaming down his face, he hand-crafted robes of righteousness for his son and daughter.

Then he ran to them, threw his arms around them, and kissed them repeatedly. Father said to his angelic servants, “Quick, bring the best robes that I have hand-crafted and put them on my son and my daughter. Put wedding rings on their fingers and sandals of peace on their feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine and this daughter of mine were dead and they are alive again.” So they began to celebrate!

Grace means never having to cover my sin. But Adam and Eve, having doubted God’s goodness, do not focus on his grace. Instead of depending upon God, they depend upon self. Being naked and afraid, they hide. They turn their backs on and run from God. They work, sewing fig leaves together to make coverings for themselves. They attempt to make themselves acceptable by trying to beautify their ugliness.

In the flesh we use every strategy at our disposal, every scheme we can imagine, to not need God’s grace. What fig leaves do we sew to cover our shame? What view of God does such shame and hiding suggest?

Trick, No Treat

Satan conspires to trick us into viewing God as Javert. In Victor Hugo’s classic work Les Miserables, Jean Val Jean is imprisoned for sixteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving family. Javert is his self-righteous, legalistic prison guard. Upon his release, Jean Val Jean is unable to find work. Destitute, he spends a night in the tiny home of a Catholic Bishop who treats him with respect and provides him with a meal. During the night, Val Jean steals the Bishop’s silver candlesticks.

The next day the French police drag Val Jean back to the Bishop’s home. “We found this thief with your possessions!”

“Jean Val Jean, you left without taking the other gifts I had offered you,” the Bishop replies as he hands Jean additional valuables. Val Jean is shocked, and changed—changed by grace. He begins to live a life of grace, caring for others. Eventually he becomes the owner of a factory and then the mayor of a French town.

But Javert hunts him down. At every turn he reminds him of his past. At one point he shouts repeatedly, “24601!” the prison uniform number Jean Val Jean had worn for over a decade-and-a-half. Val Jean is less than human. A number only. Javert exposes Jean Val Jean’s past to the townspeople and attempts to arrest him for parole violation. Shamed, Jean Val Jean runs. Taking matters into his own hands, he does not trust Javert, nor should he.

Satan desires us to imagine God as the spitting image of Javert. If Satan is successful, then, of course, we will run. We will take matters into our own hands. Whenever we mistrust God’s good heart, we always trust our own fallen hearts.

Join the Conversation

Now that you know Satan’s two primary seducing strategies, how can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to defeat each of these temptations?

Halloween: Resisting Satan, Part 1

Note: I’ve developed this two-part mini-series from Chapter 7 of my book, Soul Physicians.

“I have so many names,” John Milton tells his protégé, Kevin Lomax, in Taylor Hackford’s movie The Devil’s Advocate. Al Pacino plays John Milton, the Devil incarnated as the head partner in a New York City law firm, while Keanu Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, the brass, young small-town Florida lawyer recruited by Milton.

Taking Kevin to the top of his fifty-story law office, Milton waves his hand across the horizon as he tells Kevin, “Life is rich with possibilities for those who are unafraid to sample them.” Throughout the intense drama, Milton lures Lomax to sell his soul, tempting him with evil’s best—lust, ambition, drive, pride, ego, vanity, gluttony, and power.

Indeed, the Devil has many names and many temptations. The Bible exposes Satan’s seducing strategies.

Kevin Lomax swallowed the bait from Satan’s hook. Dazzled by all that John Milton offers, Lomax ignores the warnings of his church-going mother, neglects his beautiful but terrified wife, and silences his conscience by defending a man he knows is guilty. He succumbs to the temptation to rebel against God and everything godly.

The results, however, are far from what he expected. Rather than feasting on the fruit, he faces fear and frustration. He’s wracked with guilt over his neglect of his suicidal wife. He’s shocked by his mother’s revelation of her past relationship with Milton. And he’s tormented by Milton’s mockery. On every level, he experiences condemnation for his wicked ways. Kevin Lomax learns the hard way what we can learn the biblical way:

• First Satan tempts us to sin, then he condemns us for sinning.

Satan mounts his mutiny through a powerful lie: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God’s heart on trial whispering, “God is no Rewarder; he’s a Hoarder.” To counteract Satan’s challenge to God’s good heart, we need to expose his seducing strategies.

Seducing Strategy Number One: Enticing Us to Distrust God’s Good Heart

Satan’s kryptonite is separation through slander. He slanders God to us and us to God. His devious design lures us away from God. The original lie reveals the nature of all his lies—Satan wants us to doubt God’s generous goodness (Genesis 3:1-6).

Moses warns his readers with his opening words, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1, emphasis added). “Crafty” suggests brilliant malevolence—a being who is clever enough to package his venomous hatred in sugar coating. He simply wants some information, right? “Did God really say?” He is only after a little conversation, right? “Hath God said?” He seeks simple clarification, right? “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

“Hath God said,” seduces Eve to ask, “Why is God a ‘Must Not God?’” Serpent is not simply saying, “Do I have it right?” He is implying, “God said what!?”

God, of course, had said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). The Serpent ignores God’s generosity and twists his one prohibition—a protective prohibition meant to teach God-dependence and intended to spare planet Earth and its inhabitants from the natural consequences of self-sufficiency.

The serpent is not finished. He blatantly calls God a liar: “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Then he shoots the poisoned arrow: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). “God is withholding! God is terrified that he might have to share some of his glory. God hoards his gifts, squirreling them away so he alone can enjoy them.”

Satan wants us to see God as our Enemy, thus disconnecting us from God. Rather than seeing God as our gracious Creator who dares to create beings in his image with a will empowered either to obey or rebel, Satan deludes us into seeing God as our cruel Task-Master who suppresses our freedom and demands that we grovel. The cursing narrative of “God-Against-Us” becomes the dominant lens through which our flesh interprets life. We no longer give our Lover the benefit of the doubt. We view every event as one more evidence of God’s againstness.

Sin is like a computer virus that attempts to erase our memory of our trusting relationship with our trustworthy God. What if Adam and Eve had reminded each other that every good and gracious gift comes down from the Father of lights? What if they had recalled that God gives us richly everything to enjoy? Because they did not, they became susceptible to Satan’s second seducing strategy.

The Rest of the Story

Return tomorrow, Halloween day, as we explore Satan’s seducing strategies # 2 and # 3.

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How can clinging to God’s good heart help you to overcome Satan’s seducing strategy?

Six Prayers of Renewal 

Note: Read Part One, Six Prayers of Repentance. 

In chapter twenty-seven of Soul Physicians, I outline a biblical theology of putting on the new person we already are in Christ (compare Romans 6:1-14; Ephesians 4:20-24; Colossians 3:1-11). I embed within that theology a “Prayer of Renewal” related to each of six areas of our spiritual life:

• Our Relationship to God

• Our Relationship to Others

• Our Relationship to Ourselves

• Our Rational Beliefs/Mindsets

• Our Volitional Behaviors/Motivations

• Our Emotions

Today’s post shares these six prayers.

A Prayer of Relational Renewal: My Spiritual Relationship to God

“Father, I long for You more than gold or silver. Nothing else could ever satisfy my soul. Reorient my affections toward You and what You choose to provide. May my nearness to God be my Chief Good. Show me the beauty of Your holiness so that in worshipping Your loveliness, I exalt You. Empower me to enjoy You so that the universe marvels in amazement at how fulfilling You are. Silence all the clamoring of false lovers of the soul who would seek my attention. I want to worship You with everything I am, with undivided adoration. Give me a heart for You. A constant longing after you. Incite within me a deep passion for You.”

A Prayer of Relational Renewal: My Social Relationships to Others

“Father, Oh to be like You. Oh to be like the Trinitarian community. Mold me and make me, scour and shape me. Empower me to love like Jesus. Spirit, empower me to shrink not from the scars of death-to-self relating. Through my communion with You, enable me to give others a taste of Your grace love. More than anything, I want to give sacrificially like Jesus. You made me, recreated me, to give—to love with agape love. Thank you!”

A Prayer of Relational Renewal: My New Identity in Christ

“Father, I choose to live according to the peace that I have with You in Christ. I recall that one of Satan’s primary tools is the power of his false accusation that You are not generously accepting and that, therefore, I am Your enemy. The power of the Gospel renews my mind to the assurance that I am Your child, Christ’s bride, and the Spirit’s best friend! I put on wholeness, consciously reflecting on and resting in who I am in Christ. I put on my new identity in Christ. I enjoy who I am in Christ and who I am becoming through Christ as I become like Christ. I renew my mind to my new core identity in Christ. I reckon on this, and I reignite and fan it into flame. I clothe myself in my new peace. I cover myself in my new cleared, cleansed, and good conscience. I envelope myself in contentment with who I am in Christ.”

A Prayer of Rational Renewal: Putting On My New Beliefs and Mindsets

“Father, I surrender my mind to You. I consent to the truth of Christ’s grace narrative. I allow You to transform me by the renewing of my mindsets. Moment by moment fill my thought life with images of God-reality. Enlighten me to know You and the power of Your resurrection and the fellowship of Your suffering. Enlighten me together with all the saints to grasp how high and deep and wide and long is Your love. I commit to being a spiritual mathematician, adding life up from Your perspective. When I face suffering, I promise to believe that though life is bad, You are my Supreme Good. When struggling against sin, I promise to believe that even when I am sinful, You are gracious. And I promise not to take Your grace for granted, for though I know that it is wonderful to be forgiven, I understand that it is horrible to sin. Empower me to gird up the loins of my mind, to aim my mind toward heavenly things, to reckon on my new mindset, and to rest in my new mindset in Christ.”

A Prayer of Volitional Renewal: Putting on My New Behaviors and Motivations

“Holy Spirit, I yield to You. I consciously choose to admit that I’m a coward without You. With You, I can do all things. With You, no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. I put on choosing to depend upon You. I put on choosing to live for You. I put on seeking not only Your power to do right, but also Your guidance to know what is right. Step by step please lead me, all of the days of my life. In each relational interaction, empower and enlighten me to know what other-centered living looks like. Flow through me so that the disciplined, habitual passion of my soul reflects Your fruit. Show me how to connect to You, how to depend upon You, how to be nourished by You. Then let my greatest purpose be being like You, like Jesus.”

A Prayer of Emotional Renewal: Putting on My New Mood States 

“Father, thank You for feelings. Thank You that You have them. Thank You that I have them. Sometimes, many times, I feel like wishing them away. But then I would be a shell of a person. A Stoic, not a Poet. I don’t want that. What I want is heaven—no more cryin’ there. No more tears. No more looking in the eyes of a hurting loved one and feeling more pain than I ever thought possible. But until heaven, I want to be real. Raw. Honest. I want emotional integrity. I want emotional maturity. Help me to bring spirituality, rationality, and volitionality to my emotionality. Help me to be as emotional as King David, as Jeremiah, as Job, as Asaph, as Jesus, as You, as the great saints throughout Church history. Help me to feel life fully. Fortify me to feel the feelings of others. Deeply. Sincerely. Accurately.”

Join the Conversation

Which of the six prayers hits home the most for you today? How would you word your prayer in that area?

Six Prayers of Repentance

In chapter twenty-six of Soul Physicians, I outline a biblical theology of putting off the old manner of life (compare Ephesians 4:17-19). I embed within that theology a “Prayer of Repentance” related to each of six areas of our spiritual life:

• Our Relationship to God

• Our Relationship to Others

• Our Relationship to Ourselves

• Our Rational Beliefs/Mindsets

• Our Volitional Behaviors/Motivations

• Our Emotions

Today’s post shares these six prayers.

A Prayer of Relational Repentance: My Spiritual Relationship to God

“Father, I come home to You. I confess as sin my false lovers. I confess as sin living like the old person that I used to be. I confess as sin my spiritual adultery. I acknowledge to You and to myself that my false lovers are horrible lovers and that my pursuit of them is ugly and putrid. How foolish of me to ever believe that anyone but You could ever satisfy the longings of my soul. How shameful. How disrespectful. Forgive me my relational sin. I acknowledge that You alone are my Supreme Good. I acknowledge that You alone are gracious and compassionate. I return to You as my Forgiving Father. I return to Your Son as my Worthy Groom. I return to Your Holy Spirit as my Inspiring Mentor. I love You, Lord. Renew my vision of You as a totally competent and totally good God—boundless in holy love.”

A Prayer of Relational Repentance: My Social Relationships to Others

“Father, I confess as sin my living for self, loving self. I will put off shepherding myself and focus on shepherding others. I reject all the self sins: self-sufficiency, self-promotion, self-protection, selfishness, self-centeredness. I confess as sin my cruel, harsh, manipulative, demanding, shaming, blaming, maiming way of treating others. Most of all, I confess as sin how far I’ve moved from reflecting You and Your radically other-centered Trinitarian existence. I am putting off the flesh, the characteristic ways I used to relate and I’m putting on the Spirit, the new me created to relate like You.”

A Prayer of Relational Repentance: My Identity in Christ

“Father, I’ve been so like Adam and Eve. Running. Hiding. Defensive. Playing dress up. All because I don’t believe You are who You say You are—the Forgiving Father. What sin! I put off my shame identity. I reject my sense of abandonment, ruin, rejection, and condemnation. I put off my futile attempts to quiet my inner restlessness. Instead, I rest in You. I rest in who I am in Christ and to Christ. It’s ugly of me to try to beautify myself. It’s a slap in the face to Your Son, my Savior. Forgive me. Cleanse me. Enlighten me by Your Holy Spirit to grasp how much You love me and how loving You are.”

A Prayer of Rational Repentance: Putting Off My Old Beliefs and Mindsets

“Father, I’ve finally come to my senses. I confess as sin my foolish belief that I can make life work apart from You. I’ve arrogantly suppressed the truth of how perfectly well You care for me. I’ve denied Your fatherly love for me. I’ve sinned against You by believing Satan’s (the False Seducer) smaller story, fleshly mindset that You are not my Supreme Good. I’ve allowed my view of reality to become filled with contemptuous images of You. I’ve allowed my mind to be squeezed into the mold of this temporal world, living according to the dominant plot theme of the earthly story. I’ve been like a deaf man straining to hear the Gospel story. I’ve denied the Cross. I return to You now repenting of these idols of my heart. Though I am not worthy in myself to be called Your child, by faith I claim my adoption in Christ. Thank You for forgiving me.”

A Prayer of Volitional Repentance: Putting Off My Old Behaviors and Motivations 

“Father, I’ve sinned against You by walking in the way of the sinner, by following the self-centered pathway of _______. I must put off choosing compulsively and put on choosing courageously. I must put off the old enslaved pathways and put on my new free, empowering pathways. Help me to quit coddling, cuddling, pampering, and spoiling my flesh. Empower me to be ruthlessly fierce in rejecting it and nailing it to the Cross. Reveal my secret sins, show me the patterns that I’m blind to, help me to detect my fleshly pathways. I reject my fleshly inclinations, patterns, and character. I put on the new characteristic of _________. I reject my characteristic approach to life of _________ and by Christ’s resurrection power I replace it with my new manner of life.”

A Prayer of Emotional Repentance: Putting Off My Old Mood States

“Father, I’ve sinned against You by worshipping feelings instead of worshipping You. My current mood state of _______ exposes how desperately I’m trying to live without You. My failure to face my feelings expose my distrust in Your ability to care for me. My refusal to soothe my soul in You exposes my doubts about Your goodness. I put off my emotional duplicity replacing it, in the power of Your Spirit, with emotional integrity. I will face whatever I feel and bring it to You. I put off my emotional lasciviousness. I put off indulging my fleshly passions. I confess as sin my addiction to ___________. I recognize it for what it is: a symptom of the deeper disorder within me, a spiritual, relational, mental, willful disorder. Forgive me. Empower me to manage my moods for Your glory and the good of others.”

The Rest of the Story

The Bible never tells us to put off without also telling us how God empowers us to put on the new person we are in and through Christ. Tomorrow we share six prayers of renewal.

Join the Conversation

Which of the six prayers hits home the most for you today? How would you word your prayer in that area?

How I Write Versus How I Live

I’ve been thinking lately how difficult it is to live what I write. In my books like Soul Physicians and Spiritual Friends, I write about living the Christian life and being a Christian friend.

Frequently I fail at both.

While pondering my dilemma, I stumbled upon a quote from Samuel Johnson’s The Rambler (1750, Essay 14). (See Sympathy for Hypocrites by John Zahl at his blog Mockingbird.)

“It is not difficult to conceive that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For, without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear, and is in the same state with him that teaches upon land the art of navigation, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind always prosperous…

We are, therefore, not to wonder that most fail, amidst tumult and snares and danger, in the observance of those precepts, which they laid down in solitude, safety, and tranquility, with a mind unbiased, and with liberty unobstructed… Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory.”

Well put. Two lines summarize it best for me.

“It is not difficult to conceive that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives.”

“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory.”

I want to live well what I write. However, I’m not there yet.

More importantly, I want to live well what is written in God’s Word. I’m certainly not there.

I’m thankful for the grace of God in Christ.

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How do you deal with living imperfectly your own teaching, writing, or counseling?

Trying to Paint Over Bad Paint: The Foolish Futility of Self-Sufficiency 

When we moved into our current home five years ago, we moaned when we saw that the back deck had been painted rather than stained. We tried every known remedy to remove all the paint. The best we could do was remove about 50%.

Of course, that means that, if we’re lucky, we can go two years between having to scrape, prime, and re-paint our deck. We keep having to paint over bad paint. And no matter how good the new paint is, it won’t stick for long. What we really need is a totally fresh start.

Trying to Cover Over Our Sins

After scraping, priming, and painting my deck the past few days, I awoke this morning not only sore, but also reflecting. Ever since Adam and Eve, we have tried to paint over bad paint. We have tried to cover over our sins.

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis 3:7).

For Adam and Eve, it didn’t work for two years, or even two seconds. Immediately when faced with the pure holy love of God, they “hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8).

Though “covered,” Adam realized they were totally exposed. “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid” (Genesis 3:10).

Receiving God’s Coverings

What did Adam and Eve need instead? What do we need? They needed to receive God’s covering rather than trying to cover their sin on their own.

“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21).

So why try to cover? It’s much more than ignorance; it’s foolishness. It’s much more than self-effort; it’s willful, arrogant self-sufficient, proud rebellion.

John R. Stott reveals the depraved nature of our self-sufficient souls.

“The proud human heart is there revealed. We insist on paying for what we have done. We cannot stand the humiliation of acknowledging our bankruptcy and allowing somebody else to pay for us. The notion that this somebody else should be God himself is just too much to take. We would rather perish than repent, rather lose ourselves than humble ourselves. . . . But we cannot escape the embarrassment of standing stark naked before God. It is no use our trying to cover up like Adam and Eve in the garden. Our attempts at self-justification are as ineffectual as their fig-leaves. We have to acknowledge our nakedness, see the divine substitute wearing our filthy rags instead of us, and allow him to clothe us with his own righteousness” (Stott, The Cross of Christ, pp. 162-163).

Our God-Dependent Response to Our Sin

In Soul Physicians, I imagine a God-dependent response to our sin looking something like a combination of Genesis 3 with the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15).

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. Standing exposed as sinfully failed and flawed male and female, naked before Him with whom they have to deal.

Then the naked man and the naked woman heard the song of the LORD God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, as He always had for fellowship. And they stayed.

Adam cried out to God, ‘I am unworthy to be called Your son, for I have sinned against You in my self-sufficiency. I have failed to be the courageous man You designed and called me to be. I have been a coward rather than a protector. Make me like one of your animals, for I am soul-less.’

Eve cried out to God, ‘I am unworthy to be called Your daughter, for I have sinned against You in my self-sufficiency. I have failed to be the completing woman You designed and called me to be. I have poisoned rather than nourished. Make me like one of Your animals, for I am soul-less.”

Instead, the LORD God slew the precious animals He had handcrafted. He shed blood. Carefully, tenderly, with tears streaming down His face, He hand-crafted robes of righteousness for his son and daughter.

Then He ran to them, threw His arms around them, and kissed them repeatedly. Father said to His angelic servants, ‘Quick, bring the best robes that I have hand-crafted and put them on my son and my daughter. Put wedding rings on their fingers and sandals of peace on their feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine and this daughter of mine were dead and they are alive again.’ So they began to celebrate!” (Soul Physicians, p. 105).

Grace means never having to cover my sin. But Adam and Eve, having doubted God’s goodness, do not focus on His grace. Instead of depending upon God, they depend upon self.

Being naked and afraid, they hide. They turn their backs on and run from God. They work, sewing fig leaves together to make coverings for themselves. They attempt to make themselves acceptable by trying to beautify their ugliness.

In the flesh, we use every strategy at our disposal, every scheme we can imagine, to not need God’s grace. But our efforts are futile. Much more than trying to cover over old paint, we’re trying to cover over sin with the greatest sin of all—works-righteousness and self-sufficiency.

Join the Conversation

What fig leaves do we sew to cover our shame? What view of God does such shame and hiding suggest?