Thirty-Five Things Satan Wants from You and Me

By Tim Childs

Satan wants you and me to think he is merely a mythical character conjured up in the deranged mind of a right-wing religious zealot.
Satan wants you and me to think God’s warnings about just how dangerous he is have been greatly exaggerated.
Satan wants you and me to forget there is a line of demarcation between good and evil.
Satan wants you and me to feel comfortable in crossing over and passing freely back and forth over what he might term “a neutral zone”.
Satan wants you and me over time to become comfortable with that which is sinful, evil, and abhorrent.
Satan wants you and me to become desensitized by our frequent exposure to that which is corrupt, evil and vile.
Satan wants you and me to experiment…to tamper with sin.
Satan wants you and me to believe there are degrees of wickedness…that some forms of sin are harmless.
Satan wants you and me to become accepting of at least some manifestations of evil…to approve the behavior and those who practice the immoral, unethical, ungodly things of darkness.
Satan wants you and me not to shun them, but rather to become a joint participant in league with those who’re evil doers.
Satan wants you and me to drown our feelings of guilt, shame, or embarrassment when we fail to keep God’s moral standard.
Satan wants you and me, if we must feel shame, to have just enough (plus blended with a measure of pride) to discourage us from confessing our faults to one another.
Satan wants you and me to doubt God’s ability to forgive our failures.
Satan wants you and me to feel lonely in our Christian walk…to feel we are even isolated and alienated from our own brethren.
Satan wants you and me to become unfaithful to our Creator and Savior.
Satan wants you and me to turn our backs, permanently forsaking the living God.
Satan wants you and me to break the covenant we entered into with God on the day we, having received his grace, vowed to be faithful unto death.
Satan wants you and me to harden our hearts, dull our conscience, and dull our ears to his message.
Satan wants you and me to wear a cloak of darkness over our eyes so we can’t see the mercy, grace and love of God.
Satan wants you and me to shut tight the windows and doors of our hearts so Jesus and the word of the Lord can’t enter.
Satan wants you and me to turn our heads while he steals away any semblance of the word that may yet reside in our hearts.
Satan wants you and me to show God we really don’t love him, we don’t truly reverence him, that we couldn’t care any less than we do today about his Word.
Satan wants you and me to find excuses for staying away from God’s house of worship.
Satan wants you and me to believe he has power over our lives, including our destiny.
Satan wants you and me to think he still has the power to inflict pain and suffering upon us just as he did with God’s servant Job.
Satan wants you and me to think that if we’ll compromise, throw up our white flag of surrender, he won’t allow anything too bad to happen in our lives.
Satan wants you and me to think he is the only one who can give us the good life.
Satan wants you and me to reject the gospel plan of salvation.
Satan wants you and me to reject the idea of life made possible through the death of a carpenter’s son nearly 2,000 years ago.
Satan wants you and me to reject the command of Jesus Christ to be baptized in water to be buried into his death and be cleansed by his blood.
Satan wants you and me to reject the notion there is any association between faith and obedience of the form of doctrine presented in the gospel of Christ.
Satan wants you and me to lose our focus on Jesus, his cross, and the crown of life he yearns to bestow upon us.
Satan wants you and me to trade/surrender our souls and the souls of our family members to him.
Satan wants you and me to make him our god, to be his fateful companions presently, and throughout eternity.
Satan wants you and me to willingly give him what he wants. Will we?

- Tim Childs preaches for the Hillcrest church of Christ in Baldwyn, MS. He may be contacted at hillcrestchurcho@bellsouth.net, or through the congregation’s website: http://www.thelordsway.com/hillcrestms