Emily Hardie

Our devotion this week, Satan’s Go-To Temptation Against You, was written by J.D. Greear can be found online here.

Take Your Identity into War

Satan’s first temptation toward you will be to get you to base your identity on something about you. Anything about you. How you live. How well-liked you are. How many people come to your church. How much more successful you’ve been than others in similar circumstances. He wants to distract you from the gospel message that in Christ we have the final approval of the only one whose opinion really matters.

We defeat Satan by clinging to that gospel, defiantly, flinging it back in Satan’s face. 

Remember that these are your words to declare in the face of the enemy: If I am a child of God? I am a coheir with Christ, chosen in him from the foundation of the world. Seated with him in the heavenly places. In him, all the promises of God for me are yes in Christ Jesus. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.

Our devotion this week, Satan’s Go-To Temptation Against You, was written by J.D. Greear can be found online here.

The Root of All His Schemes

People think Satan’s main work is weird stuff — making people foam at the mouth or levitate above their beds. And while he does some of that, that’s not what he goes after with Jesus. He wasn’t even trying to seduce Jesus through the lusts of his flesh. In the wilderness, for instance, he wasn’t showing Jesus pornographic images. Satan tried to make Jesus question God’s presence and God’s plan. He knew that if he could get Jesus to doubt God’s goodness toward him, the rest would fall into place. 

That’s the root of his temptations toward us: to get us to establish our identity on something other than God’s declaration over us in Christ. The moment he convinces us to insert that question mark into our lives, our security disappears and our strength evaporates. 

We don’t battle Satan mainly by what we determine to do, but by declaring what Jesus has already done. By defiantly declaring our identity in Christ. Jesus overcame Satan’s lies when we couldn’t. We overcome Satan by trusting in his victory and asking his Spirit to overcome temptation through us.

As you continue to think through what temptation looks like in your life, remember that Jesus has already won the victory for us, and His Spirit empowers you to make it through whatever difficulty you face.

Our devotion this week, Satan’s Go-To Temptation Against You, was written by J.D. Greear can be found online here.

Defeating Satan Through Defiant Declaration

If Satan’s main aim is to distract us from God’s word, it makes sense that the primary way we overcome Satan’s temptations is by intentional meditation on God’s word. That’s true. But it may not be true in the way you think.

Many people interpret the big point of Jesus’s temptation like this: the way you overcome Satan is by knowing more Scripture than he does. Growing up, I envisioned this like some kind of Harry Potter duel. Satan throws a temptation, and you ward it off by going, “Oh no you don’t! First Peter 3:8!” Bam! Then Satan comes back with another one, and you say, “Ah, but I know the genealogy between Eliud and Jehoiachin!” And Satan says, “Whoa, I can’t touch that. Foiled again by AWANA!” 

Here’s the problem with that: No matter how many years you’ve memorized Scripture, Satan still knows more verses than you. He’s had centuries of practice. And reciting the one verse you happen to know (“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!”) isn’t going to automatically send him running away in fear.

There is something specific about God’s word that Jesus recalls, something that undergirds every verse he quotes, something so powerful that not even Satan, with all his knowledge, can refute it — his identity in the Father’s eyes. Remember? Satan said, “If you are the Son of God.” Everything Jesus quotes ultimately goes back to the security he possesses in who he is before God. The Father gave Jesus an identity-defining period, and he rested in it.

Pray today that you could rest in the identity that God has given you. Remember that He calls you His child, His beloved, His treasure.