Close the Door to the Wrong Paths

1 Peter 5:6-11(NLT)
6So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. 7Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

8Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.

10In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. 11All power to him forever! Amen.

Jesus Christ declared in John 10:10 that the devil’s purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy, but our Savior tells us that he came to the earth to give us a more than abundant life. As born-again believers, we must be overjoyed regarding what God has done for us through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Likewise, we cannot not be ignorant regarding what our Master Jesus has told us about God’s archenemy, the devil. We should be under no illusions when it pertains to the tricks of the enemy, because he concocts plots against God’s children. If we are not walking in the Spirit and have not read about satan’s tricks in God’s Word, we risk giving the devil an open door to walk into our lives and wreak havoc.

1John 1:5(NLT) declares, “God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.” Our Heavenly Father is glorious beyond glory. He deserves all praise and honor, and He is good all the time. There is no darkness in God, and His love illuminates our paths and causes us to be lifted high where we can live through His light. When we look at our own lives and what we go through on a daily basis, we might not feel that we can attain this life of love and light that God has made available to us. Although we want to be joyful and content, we can’t reconcile it with the difficult times we face.

Strategy One – Have faith in God

Jesus Christ told us in God’s Word that no one is exempt from feeling pain, heartache or disappointment. Challenges are a part of life on earth, but he also told us in John 16:33 that he has overcome the world, and he made a way for us to do the same. From the very beginning, God revealed through Adam and Eve that doubt is one of the enemy’s main tricks, and he plants lies in our minds to get us to doubt God’s willingness to bless us. God is love, and everything He does is done through His overwhelming love for us all. Love and goodness are His nature, and if we believe anything contrary to this, we are not believing in who God is, and this is an offense to Him. Jesus Christ told us in Mark 11:22 to have faith in God. This is our greatest defense against the tricks of the enemy.

Doubt is the wrong path. It is the opposite of faith in God. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please our Heavenly Father, because anyone that comes to Him must believe that He exists, and they must also believe that He is a Rewarder to those that diligently seek Him. God has given us the best through Jesus Christ. He didn’t spare His only begotten Son but gave him up to die on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. Romans 8:32(NLT) declares, “Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Heavenly Father is happy to bless us, and His goal is for us to become like His Son, Jesus Christ, and to stand strong in faith through any obstacles and adversity.

Strategy Two – Don’t be Anxious

Philippians 4:6-7(NLT) says, “6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” God tells us not to be filled with anxiety because it is the wrong path, and it will not lead to God’s solutions. When we are worried and anxious, we are not trusting Him as we should. Worrying about the issues of life plays right into the devil’s hands. It’s fuel that allows him to continue to mess with our minds so that we won’t focus on the goodness of God.

Focusing on the goodness of God is a choice, and it is the best one. It’s puts a shield of God’s peace around our hearts and minds. No problem is too big for God, and our number one go-to when we face any trouble is to demonstrate we believe His Word. We do this by immediately going to Him in prayer. We are to pray about everything, and then we must allow our hearts to swell with gratitude as we remember how He has blessed us in the past. Through our faith, we must anticipate the victory He’s going to give us and rest in the peace that only He can give.

Strategy Three – Change the way you think

Our minds are the battleground for our souls. If we relinquish control of our thoughts to the devil, we are losing the battle over our souls, and that is the devil’s whole game plan, to steal and destroy our souls. Wrong and negative thoughts will cause us to head down the path of darkness, and this is indeed the wrong path. Jesus Christ came to set us free from darkness. Galatians 5:1(NKJV) commands, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” Again, this is a choice. We can stand strong in the victory of Christ by changing the way we think, or we can be defeated through a mindset of worry and doubt. God is always rooting for us to live strong through the power and authority of Christ!

Victory is rooted in the mindset of Christ. God tells us in Ephesians 4:23 to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. And to be renewed in our minds is to line up our thoughts so they are in harmony with the mind of Christ. Our Master Jesus never worried. He trusted God in all things. If he had not done this, if he had not placed total and complete trust in God to back his every move, he could never have accomplished God’s plan of redemption for the entire world.

Through Jesus Christ, we are not weaklings. Romans 8:37 declares we are more than conquerors through him. You and I don’t belong to ourselves; we belong to God. Everything in the world belongs to Him, and He is being generous in sharing all these wonderful blessings with us. God created us because He wanted a family. We are His children and He is committed to care for us because that is what He wanted all along. 1John 4:4(NKJV) says, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” Through His Word, the example of Jesus Christ, and the gift of Holy Spirit that lives within every true believer, God has given us strategies to overcome the tricks and plots of satan. Heavenly Father tells us in James 4:7 that we must submit our whole lives to Him through Jesus Christ, and when we do this, we will resist the devil and he will flee.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“Close the Door to the Wrong Paths”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.