Christian Family Services Ministry

8-30-2018 – A Word to the Wise: Satan’s lies

Very early in life usually about two or three Satan begins to plant seeds in the hearts of children which then bear fruit throughout their life. They are very simple ideas based on the actions or behaviors of others. Examples of seeds might be ones parents are not dependable based on failures to keep promises. Or both parents working dumping the child in a day care center may result in the seed of abandonment. Sexual abuse by an authority figure results in rebellion towards authority. All of these seeds have simple beginnings yet Satan carefully nourishes them with events in the child’s life that reinforces the original lesson.

Perhaps a father promises to take his child to the show. The child waits all day for his father to come home and fulfill his promise. Something happens at work and he gets off late. He comes home and has forgotten his promise the child has not forgotten and Satan merely says to the inner child “I told you he could not be trusted.”

Jesus addresses this in His parable the wheat and the tares. “Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ 28” ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ ”

One may glean from this passage important direction for dealing with Satan’s lies.

Awareness of the lies is essential they must be gathered up and marked for destruction. However, at this point in a child’s life they are not rooted out because if they are then the good plants can be destroyed as well. Now how is this possible how can the good be intertwined with the lie in such a manner that it is at risk?

In the example the father may not even remember the event in which case nothing can be done. However, knowing the adversaries tactic what will probably happen is the child will be prompted to remind the father. The father will justify, explain, deny the promise and the situation has now been worsened in the child’s spirit. The father could simply admit to his failure ask for forgiveness and the child would probably forgive but tends not to forget. The wise father could make a record of his failures and later on in life when the child is now a father himself sits down with him show him the list of failures which would indicate to the child that those promises and failures were important to the father. Now the seeds could be completely removed, and forgiveness, mercy and gratitude replacing bitterness and failure.

Examples; in my own life very early in life Satan told me that you could not depend on others. They would, abandon you, reject you or die on you. He reaffirmed this lie throughout my youth and I accepted it as a reality that I never challenged.

When I married, the first year Satan told me a bald faced lie; my wife he said would die before our twentieth anniversary. Based on the abandonment and deaths early in life the lie was believable.

Obviously this worked in my emotions and caused me to put emotional distance between us. After all she was going to die. So I never allowed her to get close because she would die. In our twenty-first year the Lord prompted me with a question, “how long have you been married?” Twenty one years Lord, you know that. “I thought Mary was suppose to die before you had been married twenty years? Immediately the lied was apparent and immediately I could see the consequences of the lie.

When Satan lied to God and told him Job would fail the only thing God said was prove it!