Silencing the Lies Behind Every Battle You FaceSample

Know Your Enemy

Writing to battle-weary Christians, the apostle Peter warned, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8, NLT).

Today, most of us only know lions from what we see in captivity. But not in Peter’s day. Back then wild lions still roamed parts of the Middle East. To them, a lion was not a rare or even somewhat mythical creature. It was a very real threat they needed to be aware of—just like the devil.

Following Peter’s warning to “stay alert,” he gives the first clue about what the enemy does. It is in his name, “devil,” which in Greek means, “slanderer.” Slander means “the action of making a false statement damaging to a person’s reputation.”

How the devil works as a “slanderer” is why Peter compares him to a “roaring lion.” You see, wildlife experts contend that most of a lion’s roars are mock roars that are meant only to intimidate its victim. Beyond its volume, however, the roar itself has little substance.

It is the same with the enemy’s slander. The devil may shout about your faults, failures, and inadequacies, but as a Christian, his roars have no merit. That is because you are a new person in Christ who is defined by His character. The enemy does not want you to live according to your identity in Christ. The predatory behavior of a lion reveals how he attempts to keep you from doing so.

Because a lion has a small heart and lungs relative to its body size, it cannot chase down its prey the moment it sees it. Instead, it observes its weaknesses to determine the right time to attack. Armed with this information, when the time is right, the lion hurls itself in the air, aiming for the head, then for the mouth. Its victim dies by suffocation.

The enemy attacks Christians in the same way. Once he determines your weaknesses, he launches after your head—your mind. Since the mind is the control center for our lives, this is an extremely effective strategy. If not countered, the enemy knows that a single negative notion dropped into your head works its way down from there. The second stop is your mouth. In the Bible, the mouth symbolizes your words, which represent your beliefs about yourself.

You must know that the devil does not attack merely for the fun of it. No, he wants to get to the heart of you. He works to have you question everything God says about you so that you do not believe it, but that you are instead paralyzed by the toxic emotions and behaviors that come from agreeing with his slander.

Tomorrow, we will explore the sneaky way he plays in your mind. But for now, what are some of your consistent battles, either emotionally or behaviorally? How might these issues be rooted in the enemy’s work?