Welcome to part four of our series about the blessings and promises of God for you. So far, we’ve seen quite a lot, ranging from our foundation in Christ, to a greater awareness of the the totality of salvation.
Now, with this information in mind, we will explore how to guard and keep these things. Knowing about your blessings and promises is the first step, but even that doesn’t mean much if you are being robbed of them constantly.
Fortunately, the scriptures have us covered in this regard as well, and today we will be looking at how to effective keep and guard your treasure of blessings in Christ.
Being Vigilant
Just as you would naturally guard your valuables, as we’ve seen in the previous segments, God has given us tremendous amount of spiritual treasure. Protecting what God gives is crucial because as we know from scripture, our spiritual enemy, Satan, is described as a thief, among other things. (John 10:10)
Now, as a thief, Satan’s objective is to rob you of things— specifically the things which God has given, including each blessing, and ultimately spiritual life if possible. Some Christians take a passive approach to guarding what has been given to them; that is to say, they don’t take any steps to protect their blessings at all.
I’ve heard people say ‘well, if God wants me to have [insert blessing here], then he will protect it.’
That kind of statement may sound humble enough, the trouble is that it is opposite to what the scriptures actually say! Not that God won’t protect you, in-fact protection is a promise; rather, that the scriptures instruct us to be watchful and vigilant to protect what Jesus has given to us, precisely because we do have an enemy intent on stealing from us!
Logically, if we were supposed to be completely passive regarding our blessings, then there would be no need for the scriptures to inform us about the the existence of an enemy at all! Furthermore, there would be no point in God giving us His armor, as we studied a month ago.
You may be familiar with the famous words of Ephesians 6:12:
“ 12For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
And also the words of 1st Peter 5:8:
“ 8Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour:”
These two verses give us a surprising amount of information regarding the nature of attacks that the enemy brings against, and what we can do about them. So let’s begin to unpack what we see in the scriptures.
Protecting What’s Yours
In our first verse of Ephesians 6:12, we see that there is a struggle… we wrestle. However, verse 12 is also quite specific about the manner in which we wrestle: We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.
What this tells us is that our enemy is not corporeal; our fight is not worldly. Such information is crucial, because it also tells us where to focus our attention; not on the world, our physical senses, or perceptions, but on the spiritual realm.
You see, the spiritual realm affects everything else. Even everything that manifests in this physical world begins in the spiritual; 3rd John 1:2 says something very interesting regarding this:
“ 2Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.”
So, we can see here that prospering and being in health are connected to your soul prospering. This is a vital point becomes it can inform us about how the enemy will attack and try to steal… our soul, which is our mind, emotions and thoughts.
The enemy will try to unsettle, infiltrate, and otherwise upset your mind, using various methods, but always one particular commonality: the ideas, thoughts, and feelings will be anti-Christ, anti-Gospel.
We can learn an interesting detail about this from our verse in Ephesians 6:12, with the word “wrestle.” In the Greek text, the word for wrestle means “to vibrate” or “to shake violently,”
And that is exactly what the enemy tries to do to our emotions, and thoughts. Satan tries to unsettle our spiritual peace and security in Christ. He tries to cause us to tremble and doubt, typically through feelings of fear, guilt, condemnation , or legalistic ideas that promote such feelings. One of the best practical examples of this can be found in 2nd Corinthians 11:2-4:
“ 2For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
4For if he that comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which you have not received, or another gospel, which you have not accepted, you might well bear with him.”
Verse two contains an amazing truth regarding how God sees its in a spiritual sense; He considers us as spiritually “married” to Him, and the covenant which we are in with God is very similar to a typical marriage covenant between a man and a woman today.
We are to be presented as chaste virgins to Christ. Chaste means stainless (pure, no sin) which is accomplished by faith in Christ Jesus alone. Chaste also means refraining from intercourse with another, which refers to spiritual purity and faithfulness… in other words, having no idols.
In verses 3 and 4 we can see that Satan tricked and lied to Eve and as she believed those lies, her mind became “corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Eve had everything that she needed already because she had a right relationship with God, but through Satan’s lies and trickery, she began to think that she was lacking something, when the truth was that she had everything. She was placed inside God’s finished work, but because she believed the lie of Satan instead of the truth of God, she actually cut herself off from God and the consequence was very costly.
Verse 4 explains this even more thoroughly… anyone who preaches another Jesus … or if you receive another spirit. These are two separate things but they have the same deadly results. You may have noticed that there are many pastors and leaders today that preach a different Jesus than the one in the Bible. They preach a Jesus that must be satisfied through religious law-keeping, or a Jesus that is harsh and demanding. The truth is that the Jesus of the Bible bore the punishment for your sins so that you would be able to receive all the benefits of God’s limitless grace simply by believing on and accepting Christ. Anyone who preaches a Jesus of laws is misrepresenting God and bringing people into a bondage that will lead to Hell.
Now to “receive another spirit” is an equally cunning trap of the enemy. This is a trap of distraction, where basically a person hears about Jesus, but honestly they are more pleased with something else— another religious ideology or theology, rather than the limitless grace of Christ.
In each of these cases, another spirit has usurped Jesus, and is a deadly distraction. This is how the enemy ultimately works.
The Methodology of the Enemy
You see my friends, the Bible describes Satan as a liar, thief and murderer (John 8:44 and John 10:10), and this is how he operates in our lives as well.
First he will try to lie to us. If we are well-grounded in the truth of scripture, things will never progress beyond this point. However, if we are like Eve and become deceived and believe the lies of the enemy, then he will move on to step two.
Once we believe the lies of Satan, he will use that opportunity to steal from us. Satan’s lies open the door for him to be able to rob us of something; it could be our health, our finances, our time— anything we have believed a lie about. After the enemy has stolen from us, it is only a matter of time before he moves on to step three.
He murders. Satan’s ultimate goal is our destruction. If we believe His lies and allow him to steal from us he certainly will continue to steal from us until even our very lives are taken away. This is why it is so important to be grounded and saturated in the truth of scripture, so that Satan is stopped at step one and never able to deceive us to begin with. This gives insight to the verse in Hosea 4:6 in which God states that His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Prospering Through Christ’s Protection
How do we keep from being spiritually robbed? How do we get our soul to prosper? 1st Peter 5:6-8 tells us the answer:
“ 6Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:
7Casting all your care on him; for he cares for you.
8Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour:”
Verse 6 tells us to remain humble under God’s mighty hand. Remember that God is indeed mighty, and not only mighty but in verse 7 we are reminded that He does care for us; and that is the reason why we can throw all of our cares upon Him.
The word “cares” is the Greek word merimna, which means “anxiety and care through the idea of distractions”. Therefore, we are actually being instructed to release all of our distractions to Christ and submit to His authority. By doing that, we will remain at peace, knowing that God is our supplier and we will not be running from thing to thing wasting our time and resources with whatever the enemy sends our way.
Notice that verse 8 says that the enemy is seeking whom he may devour. He can not just devour anyone he wants to, there is a qualification there, and the qualification is found in the previous two verses as we have just seen. Those who do not trust in Christ and rest their cares upon Him are vulnerable to every kind of shaking; from legalistic thoughts, to worries and fears regarding whatever circumstances may come.
So in closing, I encourage you my dear friends, stay focused on Jesus, cast your cares, anxieties, and distractions upon Jesus. Let your cares be carried by Him, and the enemy will have no opportunity to rob you of anything. Jesus Himself, will cause you to keep every blessing, and you will stay calmly secure under His mighty hand.
Be blessed.