The devil is trying very hard to take as many as possible with him to hell. Even Christians are not spared because Satan tries to snatch them away from the hand of the Lord. Note that Satan is not just trying to snatch newly-saved Christians but is interested in every Christian no matter how old they are in the Lord and no matter how serious they are with their walk with the Lord. In fact, the more determined you are to please God the more determined the devil would be to frustrate and make you give up on your determination. Two of the weapons the devil uses are persecutions and temptations.
Persecution is harassment, maltreatment, hardship, pain, difficulty, burden, bullying, hounding, misery, etc., which the devil and his agents (both human and spiritual) use against a child of God with the aim of getting him/her to “curse God, and die” (Job 2:9). Now persecution comes in different ways. It is not only when someone throws you in prison and vows never to release you until you renounce the Lord Jesus Christ; it is not only when your parents refuse to pay your school fees because you have abandoned the family’s religion and embraced Jesus; it is not only when you get fired from your job for daring to tell your Chief Executive Officer that Jesus saves, etc. Persecution can also take the form of childlessness, marital problems, financial problems, sickness, failures, etc., aimed at making you give up on God and go back to the world to look for solace. The fact that you are a true child of God with sincere love for Him in your heart, doing your best to seek, serve and please Him does not exclude you from persecutions. In fact, the Bible tells us in 2nd Timothy 3:12 that “…all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” There are times when even true believers who are sold out to God and prayerfully making sincere efforts to please Him wonder if He recognizes them as His own. Some of such believers have been known to confess that they were ready to detach themselves from the Lord and go back to the world. Some have actually fallen from grace because they could no longer endure the trials and persecutions that visited them and seemed to refuse to leave. But the truth is that going back is not and should not be an option for any child of God.
Temptation is an appeal, persuasion, inducement, pull, enticement, attraction, conviction, etc., coming from the devil, the world, or the flesh, and aimed at making one to go contrary to God and His commandments. It could come as a result of persecution, the kind of company one keeps, the state of one’s heart (no wonder Proverbs 4:23 tells us to keep our heart with all diligence), the kind of things one exposes himself to, etc.
We want to consider three reasons why you cannot afford to fall now nor in future. First of all, note that if you are a dedicated Christian who has been zealous for the house of God, everything you’ve done in the Name of the Lord and to His glory is a direct slap on the face of the devil and his agents. Every time you stood in the congregation of God’s people as a pastor and preached a life-changing sermon, you destroyed the devil’s strongholds in the lives of God’s people, and offended the evil one. Each time you got involved in evangelism and someone gave his/her life to Jesus you did great damage to the kingdom of darkness. Each time you fasted and prayed until someone received deliverance from the oppression of witches, wizards, familiar spirits, etc., these agents of darkness felt insulted. The devil got angry with you each time you taught your Sunday school class and people were able to have a better understanding of certain scriptures and how to apply them to their lives. All those times you counseled people by the Spirit of God and they made the right choice and stayed out of trouble the devil wasn’t happy with you. What about those times you led praise and worship or sang in your church choir and the anointing of the Holy Ghost came down and yokes were destroyed? You created sorrow in the camp of the enemy. Remember all the times you spent praying for the youth and children in your church and neighborhood, and also teaching them to stick with the Lord and not give in to peer pressure. The devil was enraged because you created a wall of partition between him and people he was hoping to recruit for future use. Think about those times the Lord revealed to you the plans of the devil concerning your pastor, church, family members, nation, and other believers and you fasted and prayed until such wicked plans were destroyed. Satan and his agents were greatly offended, to say the least.
There are so many other ways by which Christians put their fingers directly in the eyes of the devil and his cohorts. Now imagine what would happen if someone loses his/her connection with the Almighty, loses his/her support from heaven, and falls down spiritually after being a thorn in the flesh of these workers of iniquity, after destroying their strongholds and dark kingdoms, and after binding witches and wizards and sending the fire of God into their gatherings to make them miserable. We can see from Isaiah 14:16-17 what such a believer is likely to get. It says, “They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?” Take a look also at what the Bible says about Samson in Judges 16:23-24, “Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their god: for they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us”. Imagine what demons, dirty, wicked, contrary spirits, etc., would do if they saw the same child of God who frustrated and made them miserable in the past now lying down helpless before them or approaching their gates in search of help. To them it would be cause for rejoicing (please don’t give the enemy any reason to rejoice); they would mock that believer, kick him, and make life miserable for him; they would want to do worse things to him than he did to them. And if there’s nobody who takes it upon himself to encourage and stand in prayer for that fallen believer the enemy would try to kill him before he has an opportunity to return to the Lord (which is another reason why we need to help our brethren who have fallen instead of gossiping about them).
If you are a child of God who has dealt with the devil and his agents and you are still dealing with them, bear in mind that they would want to retaliate against you with severe hatred and bitterness if they should ever find you without God in this world. This is one of the reasons why you cannot afford to fall. You must keep standing and fighting until you see the Lord in glory. His grace is sufficient for us all.
By victoria baiye
