17. The enemy creates obstacles to keep Scripture from being effective in my relationship with God.
(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.)
What would you day are some of the biggest obstacles to your life with God?
Do you believe that there is an enemy, a spiritual being that actively opposes your life with God?
How many of the obstacles you noted do you think might be at least partly due to the enemy’s efforts?
What difference would it make to you if you knew that much of your inability to do what you wished in your life with God was due to Satan’s work against you?
The Bible is God’s message of His love for us and it is given to help us begin and grow into a meaningful and intimate relationship with Him. But God has an enemy who wants to disrupt, discourage, and destroy our relationship. It has become less popular today to speak or think of an actual spiritual enemy, but perhaps that is exactly what Satan wants.
Jesus spoke about Satan when He said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18, NIV) and when He said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23, NIV). The Gospels record that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. (Matthew 4:1-2, NIV). So how might Satan create obstacles to our reading the Bible and being guided by it? There are likely more ways that Satan obstructs us than we know, but we can list some.
The first is doubt. Now some would rightly say that doubt can be a good thing if it causes us to look deeper, but the doubt that keeps us from believing is from Satan. Mark recorded a conversation Jesus had with a desperate man about this. Jesus said to the man, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” And immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24, NIV).
Confusion is another tactic Satan uses. In the parable of the sower Jesus says, When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart (Matthew 13:19, NIV) . It is critical that we understand, and want to understand, what God is saying to us in Scripture, otherwise the message will not produce its fruit in us. Sometimes when we don’t understand we may over-emphasize learning information about the Bible.
Information can be helpful but when we only focus on the facts and miss the deeper message God intends for us within the facts, we suffer from another one of the enemy’s tactics. Satan is happy for people to study the facts of the Bible, as long as this doesn’t lead to a relationship with God. Busyness is one of Satan’s favorite strategies for disrupting our life with God.
If we are too busy to have time for reading the Bible, spending time listening to God, reflecting, noticing, praying, learning from others, and even resting, then we will likely make little progress in our journey with Jesus. Relationships take time and intensity and our relationship with God is no different. When Satan temps us to fill our time and attention with other things, sometime even good things, it keeps us from the more important things.
Another way that Satan keeps Scripture from being effective in our relationship with God is through encouraging our need to be in control. We naturally want to control our lives, to make our own decisions, and we resist being under anyone else’s control. But for the Bible to influence our lives we must obey its advice and that means giving up some of our control. This is a deep heart issue that is difficult enough for everyone even without Satan’s voice. But when Satan speaks through our own thoughts and fears we need extra help in letting go of our need to be in control and submitting to the words of Scripture.
A final obstacle that we can note is that Satan resists what is needed for us to develop the ability to reflect. Jesus said of many of His listeners, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving when He quotes Isaiah. (Matthew 13:14, NIV). Our culture and our enemy fill our minds with distractions and activities that keep us from thinking deeply. Current research on the mind has observed this and refers to “mindful awareness” as in “the notion of being fully present for an inner or outer moment of experience, of being accepting and open.” (Siegel, Daniel J.; Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind, p. 39, W. W. Norton & Company, Kindle Edition.) Siegel goes on to relate how research shows that our mindful awareness is something that can be developed with practices like meditation or prayer.
When we reflect, or meditate, on passages from Scripture we not only understand the deeper meaning, we also hear the Spirit speaking to us. Satan works hard to keep this from happening. The Bible has great potential for us and our life with God, but we need to be aware of the damaging tactics of our enemy and, with God’s help, resist and overcome these obstacles.