“Since the devil can’t destroy you, the best he can do is distract you”, said Pastor Steven Furtick in a recent message. This has two powerful implications. First, Satan cannot destroy you. He doesn’t have that kind of power. No matter how vicious his attacks might be, ultimately he is powerless to defeat you. The second important concept to take away from Furtick’s statement is you can be assured Satan will pull out all the stops in order to distract you from living your life as a disciple of Jesus.
No matter how clever or wise you consider yourself, Satan is much more cunning than you are. Without being ever vigilant, we will fall for his tricks and deceptions.
The reason the distractions of Satan are so effective is because they are insidiously subtle. He is a master of disguising distraction in the form of something innocent or even good. Most of us are living lives full of distraction without ever knowing it. We think we are living a good and upright life, while all along we are actually falling prey to the distractions of the devil. Instead of building the Kingdom of God, we are building an illusion so powerful we are even deceiving ourselves.
Would you like some examples of the distractions Satan has manifested into our Western culture? Santa Claus has replaced the birth of Jesus as the object of our celebration at Christmas. The Easter Bunny is the more frequent topic of conversation around Easter than the resurrection of Christ. How about when we celebrate the killing of innocent people – who may have never heard about Jesus – at various times throughout the year under the guise of National pride?
While some of this will certainly be upsetting to our traditions and conditioned sensibilities, we’ve got to realize the only reason we are offended or tempted to brush this all aside is because of how long we’ve been buying into the lies of Satan. Santa and the Easter Bunny are fun for the kids. Being a Patriot is a sign of character and loyalty. Or so we have been led to believe. The problem is Jesus never leads us to believe anything of the sort. From whom then do you suppose is behind this thinking?
Satan is a master of taking something good and twisting it to serve his own purpose, and his purpose is always to distract us from following Jesus. If what we are doing doesn’t look like Jesus and doesn’t sound like Jesus, then we aren’t living like Jesus. We have allowed ourselves to become distracted.
Don’t fool yourself; we are all susceptible to the distractions of Satan. To defeat them we’ve got to look at the world through the lens of Jesus Christ. Does what we are doing align with the teachings of Jesus? Could we imagine Jesus participating in the behavior or action? If Jesus were standing beside you in the flesh, would you be doing what you are doing? Don’t be ashamed if you’ve allowed yourself to be distracted, but don’t be ignorant and remain in that state either. Through Jesus you have the power to see through the distractions, dismiss them, and serve God as He created you to do.