A Necessary Evil

 

Be sober and alert. Your enemy the devil, like a roaring lion, is on the prowl looking for someone to devour. Resist him, strong in your faith, because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are enduring the same kinds of suffering.  1 Peter 5: 8-9

Allow me to present you with a challenging truth. God created Satan (Eph 3:9, Col 1:16, Rev 4:11, John 1:1-3). Did He make a mistake? No. God doesn’t make mistakes. In fact, before God created Satan, He knew all that Satan would do. He knew about the coup that he would lead in heaven. He knew about all the trouble Satan would cause in creation and in the whole of human history. And God made him anyways. Why do you think He would do that? For our good, because God loves us so much.

It's a bit confusing isn’t it? But, you see, we need an enemy. We need someone to poke and prod us or we will fall into complacency. We need someone to fight against, to watch out for, or we will fall asleep.

In our modern, humanistic times, the world has taken to calling it stress. Too much stress and we burn out, sometimes to the point of having to completely leave our lives behind. But not enough stress and we sink into the couch, never to be seen again. Researchers have actually determined that we need some stress in our lives to function well. There’s lots of info out there, but I’ll leave a couple of links below that you can start with.

We all need an enemy, but no one wants to fight alone. I’m so glad our text today ends with, “because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are enduring the same kinds of suffering.”  We are linked arm-in-arm with all of our brothers and sisters in Christ, with Jesus leading us into battle. We have the shield of faith (Eph 6:16) to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. We fight, as Jesus did (Luke 4), with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Eph 6:17).

Here's the Thing: We must remain sober and alert. We cannot be drawn into complacency or distracted by this world. Our enemy is real, and he longs to keep us from our full potential in Christ. We must ground ourselves daily in the truth of God’s Word, and stay connected in fellowship to our brothers and sisters so we can be lifting each other up to the Father in prayer.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201612/why-some-stress-is-good-you

https://hbr.org/2012/04/stress-is-not-your-enemy.html

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