Quit Allowing Satan to Waste your Life!

I was thinking about calling this post: "Quit Wasting Time" or "Quit Wasting Energy" but then I decided, it's our life that the Devil wants to waste. He wants to waste our time, energy, strength, spiritual connection with God. He wants to drain us, weaken us and makes us totally useless as a vessel of the Lord. That's his purpose.

Sometimes it might help to know what the enemy is up to and why.

WE OFTEN HAVE A CLEAR CHANNEL TO THE DEVIL.

The secret is that he doesn't want us to know it's him! That's how he can accomplish so much. By the time we're down-and-out, depressed and suicidal, we start to realize that "maybe" it wasn't just our own thoughts that got us to this place. Maybe there was somebody or something else leading us down the garden path to destruction.

He takes us into the past because he knows that we can do nothing to change the past. (Although, you know, with God all things are possible. So, even in the past, our prayers can change the effects of past actions. I believe it.)

However, having said that, when we find ourselves standing IN the past, mulling over past mistakes, wrong decisions and things that caused harm to ourselves and others, it's time to ask ourselves,

"WHY? Why am I thinking about the past? It's gone."

You may come to the same conclusion that I have. IT IS THE ENEMY. He takes me to a place I don't want to go to and for no good reason, no purpose except to get me upset, miserable, discouraged, depressed and regretful.

Those, my friends, are NOT the fruits of the Spirit of God.

The Devil is a TIME-WASTER.

Do you ever feel that SO much time has been lost by thinking really dumb thoughts? Have you ever jerked yourself up and snapped out of a wasted hour or two of negativity and non-productivity? You feel like you've been spinning your wheels? You feel like, all of a sudden there's this HUGE MOUNTAINOUS MESS OF IMPOSSIBILITIES in your lap that you NEVER ASKED FOR!

Well, ok, if you haven't ever felt like that, I'm happy for you. You must be super-human. But, I HAVE. I admit it. Sometimes life seems impossible.

Nothing has changed. The ceiling didn't cave in. God is still on His throne. Yet, life just SEEMS impossible for no particular reason, or maybe for ALL KINDS OF STUPID REASONS that I couldn't possibly have made up on my own. It took a skillful master of GARBAGE to come up with 101 reasons to hate life and everybody on the planet.

What I'm trying to do here is to expose some of the inner workings of our PE#1. (Public Enemy Numero Uno, otherwise known as the Stupid One.) If the Devil has ANY super powers (which, by the way, he does NOT) they would be #1 stupidity #2 rebelliousness #3 deception #4 fearfulness

Do you call those powers? The Devil has no power. His non-power is in fear, deception and WASTING OUR TIME! It's up to US to STOP LISTENING TO HIM.

When Jesus went out into the wilderness for forty days just before the beginning of His ministry, the scripture says, He went out to be tempted of the Devil. Wow! Are you kidding me, Jesus? You deliberately went out there to be tempted? How does that make any sense? Why would You do that?

Like they say on some TV shows: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Seriously. We cannot be Jesus. We can't just WALK ONTO THE DEVIL'S TERRITORY AND WELCOME HIS TEMPTATIONS. Well, we CAN, but it won't bode well for us if we do. That's because we are not Jesus. Only Jesus could do something like that. So, if we DO find ourselves inadvertently "out in the wilderness being tempted of the Devil" we better get Jesus to fight the Devil for us.

Ok, so here's Jesus deliberately going out to face the enemy. Does he arm himself? Does he bring along his sword, shield, helmet and a bunch of army rations? How does he plan to face the Devil head on?

He FASTS. He deliberately allows his physical body to be weakened. Or, on the other hand, He was concentrating so deeply on His Father God that he didn't require food. Or, perhaps He didn't realize how long He had gone without food.

Have you ever been so absorbed in reading the Word and communing with God that you have forgotten to eat?

To me, forty days is a heck of a long time. It's over a month and if I dared to try to go without food, for one thing, I'd probably faint. I'd be too weak to work, so I'd be broke, but that's beside the point. I just feel that I would never want the Devil to waste so much of my time. But, that's all human judgment, isn't it? In God's eyes, Jesus needed this battle. It was the foundation of his ministry. Satan needed to be conquered with the WORD OF GOD.

The funny thing is, I wonder whether Satan even realized that, though HE was ATTACKING, Jesus was the VICTOR that day. Satan was overcome and stripped of his authority over the King of Kings at that moment.

Round ONE: Knock out!

Round TWO: He's DOWN!

Round THREE: He's OUT FOR THE COUNT!

Hallelujah! The angels came to minister to Jesus, the newly crowned VICTOR! AMEN!

Matthew 4

1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

We see here that it is the Spirit of God that is "leading" Jesus into the wilderness for one express purpose.

2 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungred.

This was a true fast both day and night. Not many could survive without food for that length of time.

3 And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

WHEN DID THE DEVIL COME TO HIM? Exactly. He came when he figured Jesus was STARVING. He was going to use that against Him. Notice how scripture calls him the tempter? Satan doesn't even get to be called "Lucifer" or Satan or even the Devil, just simply the stupid, silly, weak and useless, childish, foolish tempter. Like a little kindergarten kid on the playground.

All Jesus had to do was to quote the Word. Jesus IS the Word and Jesus quoted the Word in the Spirit of God. BOY does the Devil HATE that! He tucks his scrawny tail between his knobby knees and FLEES at the WORD OF GOD.

All in all, the Devil (or the tempter or as Jesus called him, the liar) is a puny, disgusting, disobedient, weak, wimpy TIME WASTER! THINK about how much TIME he has already wasted of our LIVES! I, for one, do NOT want to waste any more of my precious time on the PUNK!

The ONLY ONE Who deserves ALL my time and attention and communication is JESUS CHRIST, the Messiah, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Lord of Lords and CONQUEROR OF SATAN!

Resist the Devil and he will flee from you! Leave the lousy loser to languish in LOSERVILLE. Join the WINNERS with our Number One Winner of All TIME. Our Forever Champion: King Jesus!