Evil Twists pain and uses it against you!~ day 15

A foundational truth that we’ve emphasized so far is that God wants to take our pain and redeem it. 

Unfortunately, evil wants to do the opposite. It wants to use the pain in your life and use it to separate you from all that is good. Evil is real and has targeted you for even greater pain. Evil wants to take all that you own, including those who are precious to you and even your own life.

It wants to chip away at you until you are cynical, neurotic and depressed.

It will target you and fill your mind with negative thoughts that you in turn slime others with

Pain that festers gets passed on

I don’t know if you’ve heard this phrase, “hurt people hurt people” before, but it refers to the phenomenon that when you’ve been hurt, you have a tendency to lash out and hurt others.

It’s sad and horrible phenomenon. It’s why children who have been abused themselves become abusers. It’s why children whose parents rage and throw things themselves develop tempers.

It may explain things you find broken in yourself. The biblical basis is Exodus 34:7, which describes how God will visit the consequences of sin to the third and fourth generation.

Practically, what happens is that the wounds we receive when we are most vulnerable become access points for evil in the same way that a physical wound can become infected. And many of these “spiritual infections” never heal. They are tender to the touch. We adopt behavior that defends our wounded places and keeps others from touching them.

Struggles:

Where does evil come from? We read about Jesus confronting demons in the Bible – do they still exist? Am I in danger from them? I needed answers.

Seth referenced M. Scott Peck’s book The People of the Lie it was helpful to our group. Peck is a psychiatrist who probed the nature of evil. According to Peck, an evil person:

• Is consistently self-deceiving
• Avoids guilt or criticism
• Deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception
• Projects his or her evils on others
• Abuses political and emotional power 
• Maintains a high level of respectability
• Lies incessantly 
• Is consistent in his or her sins
• Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim 

Most of us have no problem understanding evil when we look at a man like Hitler or Jim Jones, or Charles Manson, or any other countless murderers. But what if such men were still alive and never held to account? 

 In 1965, a million Indonesians were murdered as the government looked on. Many of the killers are still alive, living just down the street from the families of those they killed.

How do we explain such monsters?

Peck calls them “people of the lie.” They start out innocent enough as children, but somewhere along life’s path, they lose their way. They believe lies and tell lies until evil so embeds itself in them that they now represent evil.

Culture doesn’t help

Recognize that you are being raised in a culture that is ill-equipped to deal with the reality of evil. Though the Bible is full of instruction about how evil targets us, our churches have effectively bought into this rational world view.

Churches around the world have no such problem. In places like Haiti or Uganda, young people visiting from America find their world view deeply challenged as they encounter the reality of spiritual warfare. 

Where are you in all this? Do you know how to wield the authority you have been given to confront your enemy? If someone asked you to set them free from demonic attack, could you do so? 

Perhaps a good place to begin growing in your authority is by looking at the relationships in your life. Do you know a person of the lie? Have you ever been victimized by such a person? You do not have to cower – the Bible says “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)

Evil is in this to win. We all have the potential to become a person of the lie if we’ll just allow ourselves to be seduced by evil. Play footsie with a lie long enough and it will wrap itself around you.

Application: Confront the lie

You have the power to set a person of the lie free with a truth encounter. Every lie denies the reality of truth. Confront the lie in the name of Jesus and evil has to flee. 

Evil is personal and it hates you. You are a target. The smart thing to do is to face reality and learn to fight it.