I was speaking to a father of a teenage girl today.  He was expressing an ample amount of frustration…which isn’t unusual for the parent of a teen. His issue with the daughter was that she didn’t take care of or seem to care about the things she had been given.  Those things included a car, tuition for private schooling, sports gear for all her sporting interests, etc.

The money wasn’t the issue.  The issue was that she did not appreciate the hard work, the sacrifice, it took for him to provide those things. Those were his expressions of love and when she didn’t take care of the car or put maximum effort into her schooling, he felt totally unappreciated and felt as if his best gifts had no value.  He felt unloved by his daughter.

Later, I was thinking about how our Heavenly Father must feel when we ignore, reject, or take for granted his greatest gift to us…his Son. Thanksgiving is this week.  How many of us may go through the day focused on food and football without taking a moment to express thanks for all that we have in Jesus? Christmas is waiting in the wings and we are already desperately or frustratingly looking for gifts that are just what our loved ones would want or need.  How many of us will invest hours and maybe significant cost into the “perfect gift, ” as an expression of  our love and appreciation for that person?  How many of us would be hurt or even angry if the friend or family member we had spent hours and energy shopping for, simply tossed the gift aside as something of little value or interest?

Jesus is the greatest gift and it is important to remember he was a gift.  God was not obligated to give us Jesus.  He was given as a gift. Isaiah put it this way,  “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end (Isa. 9:6-7, emphasis added).

John spoke of that same gift when he said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn.3:16-17, emphasis).

This gift was an astounding expression of God’s love for each of us.  It was purchased at the ultimate cost, but it met our ultimate need…reconnection with our Father and eternal life with Him.  Amazingly, he picked out the gift before the creation of the world and gave it to us while we were still estranged from him. The apostle Paul wrote, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:7-8).

Here is my point.  God has given us the ultimate expression of his love and the ultimate cost of his own Son.  If we treat that gift casually or toss it aside, how will we face the Father, the giver of our gift?  We feel hurt or angry if someone doesn’t value the car we gave them or the education we have sacrificed to pay for.  How much more should the Father feel that way when we treat his son with contempt or indifference or simply casually?

So…as you shop feverishly for the perfect gift over the next few weeks or as you stand in long lines on Black Friday, think of the perfect gift given to you at extreme cost and take a moment to cherish the gift and then take great care with what has been given to you.

We often think of spiritual warfare as powerful prayers, authoritative declarations, or encounters with the demonic through deliverance.  That is part of the equation, but building proactive walls of defense is a better strategy, in the same way as keeping burglars away from  your property with great security measures is far superior to a confrontation with a stranger in your home in the middle of the night.

Scripture often calls on us to guard our hearts and minds because those are most often the entry points of the enemy.  The most comprehensive statement about this may be found in Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Phil. 4:4-9, emphasis added).

One of the most common and yet undetected strategies of the enemy is to create dissatisfaction in our hearts and minds. In some ways, that was his first ploy recorded in scripture.  Satan spoke to Eve and said, “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’” (Gen. 3:1)?  With these words he slyly implied that God was stingy…that he was the kind of God who would withhold good things from his children.  Eve went on to say that they could eat from any tree in the garden except one – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Satan countered by implying that the forbidden tree was actually the best tree in the garden and the only one that really mattered. Instead of being grateful for the abundance God had provided, Eve suddenly focused on the one thing God had withheld.  Suddenly, she thought that all her happiness and significance was to be found in the one tree that was out of her reach, even though the Tree of Life was always available.

In the same way, when God led the Hebrews out of Egypt after 400 years of slavery, they quickly stopped being thankful for their new found freedom and the miraculous deliverance God had provided.  They quickly stopped being grateful for the land God had promised them that was actually only a few days away and began to focus on their immediate desires.  Within days they began to complain about their lack of meat, their lack of water on demand, and the “boring manna” they ate each day, and so forth.  Through their complaints, they immediately cast God as a God who did not care about  their needs, who only had catastrophe planned for their future, and who brought them out of slavery only to abandon them in the desert.

Once we begin to focus on “the one thing” we desire that God has yet to provide and forget about all the other blessings he has given us, we begin to see God though the eyes of Eve and the Israelites who questioned God’s goodness, his intentions, and his provision for his people.  Through our own accusations, our trust begins to diminish and we come into agreement with the enemy.  Unfortunately, this focus on what I don’t have rather than on what I do have is human nature and a tendency we must guard against.  Madison Avenue preys on this idea that my happiness is always found in one more thing.

Intentional prayer with thanksgiving is the weapon against this universal scheme of Satan.  As Thanksgiving approaches, we are reminded of this principal but would do well to practice it year-round.  To rehearse all that God has done for me in the past, all that he is doing in the present, and his promises for my future is a form of worship and keeps my heart and mind fixed on him as good, as my provider, as my savior, and my deliverer…even when I might be facing extraordinary challenges. 

Unfortunately, I keep running into people in counseling who have come to define love as someone giving them whatever they want, whenever they want it.  No matter how much they have been given, the minute one desire is withheld, they declare they are not loved. They feel abandoned and betrayed at the first “no,” no matter how much has been given and how many needs have been met before.  A good father says “no” or “not yet” to many desires of his young children as they grow and mature.  Our Father has not lied about the pain that will inevitably come our way in a fallen world.  These responses to our prayers and hardships that come are not evidence that he doesn’t love us, but his presence and his grace to face these hardships is the evidence of his love.

Satan loves to bait us with that attitude whenever God says “no” or “not now” to any request or any longing we have in our lives.  The key to overcoming Satan in these situations is to have an unbreakable confidence in the nature of God that he is good, he is love, he hears our prayers, and he always is working in our best interest.  The practice of thankfulness continually reinforces our faith in his character and the belief that he is good, even when a longing or a need seems to go unanswered for the moment.

If Eve had believed with rock solid certainty before her sin that God was a generous God who met her every need and protected her from things her flesh desired but that would destroy her in the end, she would not have taken and eaten.  We need that same certainty before Satan whispers again that God is holding out on us and keeping from us some singular source of our happiness apart from him.

A journal with all the things we are thankful for in our past and in our present would be a great Thanksgiving project (singularly or as a family) that would be a helpful reminder when Satan comes to tempt our mind and our hearts. Adding to it daily through the year, would also be a strong testimony against his lies.  The testimonies of thanks would be a great tradition to be read and added to each Thanksgiving.

The Bible is full of moments when monuments were created (piles of stone) as a reminder of what God had done for his people in a certain circumstance, traditions such as Passover and the other feast days, and the Lord’s Supper.  These are all testimonies of the love and care of God for his people. Some personal reminders (testimonies) of God’s goodness to you, would also be a blessing and a powerful weapon when the devil comes calling.

Have you ever driven a car that needed a front end alignment? Somehow one front tire was no longer parallel to the other.  Tires usually get out of alignment by hitting curbs,  dropping into potholes, or experiencing a fender bender.  As you drive the front end begins to vibrate (sometimes intensely), the tires wear out quickly, and even breaking can be affected.  If it is severe enough, the car is practically undriveable. When you start to feel the front end shutter, it’s time to go to an alignment shop where they will make adjustments or replace parts so your front wheels are perfectly parallel again and going in the same direction.

As believers, we need to check our own spiritual alignment, from time to time, to see if we are going in the same direction as Jesus.  Misalignment with Jesus can wear us out and damage us.  Those places in our lives that are not parallel with Jesus, give Satan an opening in our lives to afflict and oppress. Sometimes when we have gone through a stretch of rough road in our lives or have hit a few speed bumps hard, our alignment can drift.  Let me suggest a couple of things we need to inspect to make sure we are still on track.

For most of us, our alignment begins to suffer in areas that are not what we think of as overt sins…adultery, pornography, excessive drinking, drug addiction, embezzlement, abuse, etc.  To be sure, faithful Christians can fall into the snare of the devil and find themselves in these deep weeds of sin wondering how they got there. If we were to examine ourselves we would quickly identify those areas as something that needed repentance and immediate realignment. The people in our lives who cared about us would also point those things out for our benefit.

In many cases, however, Satan prefers to be more subtle.  We just finished a Freedom Weekend where fifty or so people spent an entire afternoon getting free from demonic oppression of one form or another.  Some had entered in through trauma or seasons of sin in their lives.  They were very aware of the oppression that had been coming from those spirits. But others had been oppressed and afflicted for decades and had come to assume that their struggle was just the fabric of life about which nothing could be done…years of anxiety, depression, people pleasing, self-loathing, and so forth. So often we need to look at the not-so-apparent sin to see where we are out of alignment and where the enemy has established a subtle stronghold in our lives.

To begin, the great sin of Israel that God rebuked over and over was idolatry.  That is easy to identify if we are bowing down before graven images and going up to the temples of false Gods to offer sacrifices. But in America, our gods  – the things we put before the God of Heaven – are more difficult to identify because they are an accepted part of our culture.  An idol is anything that we give a greater priority to than God.  It is an alternate source of idenitfy, security, provision, and protection that we go to rather than looking to Jesus.

Many of these idols are even good things when kept in perspective.  We all need a job to provide for our families and to help others in need.  But how many have placed careers ahead of Jesus, ahead of spiritual family, and even our biological family.   No one seems concerned when we can’t worship together or serve in the kingdom because we have to work. Sometimes, we have no choice, but more often we choose it by choosing the career and we choose the career because we want more money, a bigger house, a boat, a fully decked out pickup, and everything our children want that we didn’t have. Our career and our possessions become our identity – our source of significance rather than God.

Nothing is wrong with any of those things by themselves, but when they take priority over God and the Bride of Christ (his church) month after month, they have become “acceptable idols.”  And yet, we always feel justified in our choice to put Jesus after our career, after our recreation, after our children’s activities, and so forth because the good people in our culture approve.  Yet Jesus was very clear that if we don’t put him above everything else in this life, we cannot be his disciple.  A good look at our time, our expenditures, and our involvements might reveal an idolatry we don’t really want to acknowledge.

A second area in which the enemy thrives is in our words. Remember Jesus said that on the Day of Judgment, we will have to give account for every careless word we have spoken. When we come into agreement with Satan through angry, cynical, unbelieving, and judgmental words, we open the door for him.  Ephesians 4:29 counsels us to let no unwholesome talk come out of our mouths but only words that are good for building others up.  We often justify our negative talk and judgments we place on others by assuming they deserve what we said. However,  there are no “unless they deserve it” clauses in God’s command to bless and not curse even our enemies. Gossip, constant criticism, angry outbursts, constant criticism, judgmental statements, etc. also constitute open doors.

Another open door I have become sensitive to lately is the door of non-submission. Scripture clearly commands that we are to be submitted to Jesus, to leaders, children to parents, wives to husbands, employee to employers, etc.  And yet, how many of us are unsubmitted…especially, in our hearts.  The core of Satan’s fall was rebellion…a refusal to submit.  When we rebel against God’s order of authority, we rebel against him.  Certainly, when we come into agreement with the devil on this matter, we provide a legal right for him to attack us.

Finally, I think another open door that few of us consider is a low level of holiness in our lives. On several occasions, scripture calls us to be holy even as He is holy.  We are commanded to avoid the unclean things in the world around us.  But certainly, many of us  compromise holiness with the things we watch, read, listen to, sometimes the people we spend time with, and the environments we frequent.  Remember Paul’s admonition, “Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty (2 Cor. 6:17-18).  We may want to take a holiness inventory, from time to time, to see how well we are aligned with the holiness of God.  Misalignment there, will also be an invitation to the enemy.

I’m not advocating a spiritual paranoia but I am encouraging us to take an inventory from time to time to see where carelessness, rationalizations, and idolatry may be subtle, but over time will allow the enemy entrance into our lives.  We will want to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal those areas to us and bring conviction where it is needed.  In the natural world, we keep our doors and windows locked, set up security systems and keep our homes well lit at night.  Perhaps, we (myself included) need to be as diligent in the spiritual realm where the stakes are even higher.