Four Common Tricks of the Devil

The Devil; though a small adversary, he’s a crafty one. He plays on our fears, feeds on our doubts, and works with our misunderstandings. He doesn’t care what it takes to see you fall, only that you do! Nor is he particular on whom he uses his methods, only that we fail, give up, and ultimately self destruct. He is the father of all lies (John 8:44) and uses your own fleshly emotions against you every time. Fact is, your attitude is the key to your successes, and failures. I would like to leave you with a few insights on how the devil works, and uses his power of persuasion against us. Here are four, of many tricks, the devil will use to throw you off track.

1.  The devil wants you to believe he has power over you. He has no power other than what you give him. He comes in with lies and suggestions.  If you choose to listen and act upon them, he gains power over you. The fact is, God has given you power over him! Luke 10:19 says “Behold, I give you the authority… over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you“. This is the last thing he wants you to know. He would love for you to think that he is all-powerful and can do anything he chooses against you. Remember Job. God had to allow Satan to touch him. If Satan could even touch you without God’s permission, he would instantly destroy you. (John 10:10) “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy“.

2. When the enemy speaks to you, it will always be in the first person as if you are hearing your own voice. It will sound something like this, “I can’t make it anymore, I’ve been doing so bad lately, I just feel like giving up.” The reason this method is so clever, is that it’s the easiest to believe. If he spoke to you in the third person, “You are so bad, you can’t make it, you’re a failure,” you would know it was the devil at work speaking his lies, and you wouldn’t listen. We typically get defensive when others bash on us, and he knows this.

3. The Devil always checks your understanding of truth (God’s word) to see how much deception will be necessary to defeat you. When he told his first lie to mankind in the garden of Eden he started out by asking, “Has God truly said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”  We must know truth in order to defeat him and to protect ourselves. “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)

4. He will try to make you unsatisfied with where you’re at, so that you won’t care about where you’re going. When we spend our time being ungrateful with where God has brought us from, we lose the power of our testimony. Why is our testimony so important? And why does he want to take the power of it away from us? (Revelation 12:11)  And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. Our testimony defeats him every time!