“I have loved you,” says the Lord. Yet you say, “In what way have You loved us?” Malachi 1:2
What is the number one strategy of Satan in the way he attacks God and His children?
There are a lot of possible answers. We could answer that Satan mocks the Lord Jesus Christ and His shed blood on Calvary’s cross. He definitely does that. We could say he demeans God’s Word and that is true. We could also say that he attacks by making sin look attractive and tempting us to engage in the sin that God saved us from. In reality Satan uses all these strategies and he will try them all until he finds one ormore that hits our area of weakness.
There is one attack he makes which is core to everything else and
many Christians have bought into this deception. Satan’s core
attack is against the one he absolutely hates. He attacks God and
the core of His character – His love and goodness. Satan attacks us making think God does not love us, does not care about us, is not good and is holding out on us. If he can get us to believe that then he can make a major dent in our faith for why would we trust and obey someone who does not care about us or have our best interests at heart?
Think of the Garden of Eden. Satan goes to Eve and sarcastically asks if God told her not to eat of every tree of the garden. In other words Satan is saying “is God really as unloving and uncaring as I have hard? He won’t let you do all those things that are good and fun?” We can tell from Eve’s answer that a dent is placed in her thinking about God. She responds ”No, He is not that bad. He only keeps us from doing one fun thing.”
Satan places doubt about God in Eve’s mind. This is a battle we all have to fight. Gideon asked the question, “If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us?” (Judges 6:13) In Malachi Israel is arguing with God and they throw this is God’s face. Israel forgot that God’s love is unearned, unsolicited, and unconditional. So, God’s statement of love was met with arrogance, “How have you loved us?” In others words if you loves us you would not have let all these bad things happen to us. Remember when the Lord met Peter at the Sea of Galilee? He told Peter he was going to die for the Lord, in fact he was going to die like the Lord – he would be crucified. Peter stops short. That does not sound good, that does not sound like God loves him. What does he ask the Lord? “What about John? Will he have to go through some bad stuff too? Why me?”
Too often we evaluate God’s love for us based on a worldly standard. We say if God loves us we should not have problems. That is not what the Lord told us. He said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world”.
What can we learn? Doubting God’s love for us hinders our faith in Him. God’s love in our lives is designed to make us stronger. He tells us to avoid certain things that will harm us. Satan does the opposite. He tells us the things God denies are good and fun but then, when we are caught in their misery, he condemns us for doing evil. Paul told
Timothy , “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”.
When you doubt God loves you and cares about you that is not from God. It is an attack from Satan to make you question the character of the God of the universe who saved you.