1 Peter 5:8-9

Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

Who has not heard the roar of Satan’s voice? I would dare say that everyone at some point has heard his roar, may be even right now you are hearing his roar in your ear, in your mind and in your heart. The goal of his roar is to strike fear into the ear that will hear, into the mind that will meditate upon him, and into the heart that is willing to believe him. His roar is designed to drown out the voice of God, to convince and confuse you. The roar of Satan speaks to our sin nature, he wants humanity bound for hell instead of hope. He wants you living in sin instead of standing on your salvation, convincing you to trade God’s holiness for happiness. He doesn’t want to maim you he wants to make a meal out of you, to destroy and devour you. So what are the devices of Satan designed to make dinner out of you:

• DECEPTION

Genesis 3:3-5 reminds us of his ploys “…God has said, ’You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ Then the serpent said to the woman. ’You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” From the very beginning he used lies to lure mankind away from God. Today we live in a time of great deception, how do we keep from being deceived? We must focus on the foundation of our faith as we filter his lies through the Lord’s word. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 4:14 that deception comes when we are not grounded in the Word of God: Eph. 4:14 “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.”

• DELUSION

The devil loves to see people living in delusion. This is a warped mental state, were we believe the lie and end up with a wrong concept of who we are. Some today have delusions of grandeur, believing they are the best.  Paul reminds us in Romans 12:2-3 not to be conformed to the patterns of this world but to be renewed in our thinking so that we don’t become high minded. The devil wants to deceive and delude us but he can’t if we have the mind of Christ. Christ shared his mind with his disciples when He said the first should be last and the greatest the least. Satan began the great delusion when he thought he could dethrone God and delusion will cause you to become dinner for the devil.

•  DISATISFACTION

We live in a world of bigger and better, about the time you buy it there is a better one. Dissatisfaction comes when we make happiness in our possessions or position our priority. We may think we are too smart for Satan to catch us in this trap, but the wisest man who ever lived fell for this tactic. Listen to his words in Ecclesiastes 2:3-11:

3 After much thought, I decided to cheer myself with wine. And while still seeking wisdom, I clutched at foolishness. In this way, I tried to experience the only happiness most people find during their brief life in this world. 4 I also tried to find meaning by building huge homes for myself and by planting beautiful vineyards. 5 I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I built reservoirs to collect the water to irrigate my many flourishing groves. 7 I bought slaves, both men and women, and others were born into my household. I also owned large herds and flocks, more than any of the kings who had lived in Jerusalem before me. 8 I collected great sums of silver and gold, the treasure of many kings and provinces. I hired wonderful singers, both men and women, and had many beautiful concubines. I had everything a man could desire! 9 So I became greater than all who had lived in Jerusalem before me, and my wisdom never failed me. 10 Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors. 11 But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.

Dissatisfaction breeds a desire for more, it’s a never ending process designed to draw you away from the true source of peace and the One who provides. Today we live in a world where people are constantly dissatisfied with their possessions, position and even their partner.

• DEPRESSION

Not all depression is a result of the devil but some is. This was Elijah’s problem, he had just prayed down fire from heaven and God consumed the sacrifice and the altar. But then he got a death threat and he tells God, it’s over, I don’t want to live anymore, I just want to die. Have you ever been there? Depression always leads to defeat and some of our greatest depressions in life come after our greatest victories. You don’t have to be dinner for the devil, Paul says that we are to resist the roar by focusing on our faith not our feelings.

Exodus 14:15-16

15 And the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. 16 But lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea

Hebrews 11:29 tells us that by faith the people passed through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground. Exodus 14 paints the details, they had left Egypt free at last only to march for a few days and then suddenly stop in their journey. The Bible records their camp, before them is the great Red Sea, on either side of them is a mountain and behind them comes Pharaoh’s army pursuing and pinning them in. On the surface it seems they are hopelessly trapped and for all practical purposes there was no way out. So in the midst of chaos and confusion the people come to Moses and begin to cry out to him, and he goes and cries to God. I love God’s response to them; Stop crying and start moving. I wonder if the words of verse 15 are the heartbeat of what God needs to tell us today Stop CRYING Start GOING forward! To move forward means to advance and make progress. What God was saying is that they had been camped there long enough, it was time to pull up the tent pegs and continue on in the journey. God’s commandment to stop crying may seem a little harsh but this isn’t the first time they have been down this whinny road together. They cried out in Egypt and God brought them out as He brought Pharaoh to his knees. God does care when we cry out but when he has made a way out we must move not stop and resume our crying.  Today we seem to be more interested in moaning than moving, we want to cry and carry on instead of follow His call.  Why it is fundamental that we go forward:

• Fear

When we are afraid it’s easy to stop and cry, the problem is it doesn’t get us anywhere, we become stationary in our walk. We stop walking by faith and start living in fear. Fear is a formula for failure, it makes us skeptical, selfish, stubborn and shortsighted. They had just seen God’s handiwork in a mighty way, they had witnessed the ten plagues, they had experienced the first Passover and they had just been released by Pharaoh after 400 years of bondage! One would think that they would have been filled with faith, however, they were crippled instead by fear.

• Feelings

When we fail to go forward we stop being moved by faith and start being motivated by feelings, we start murmuring and complaining. Fear replaced faith and then it was all about their feelings, they started complaining to Moses, blaming all of their problems on him. It is interesting how they don’t want to assume any of the responsibility themselves. The problem wasn’t with the Fathers plan it was with his followers’ progress.

• Fleeing

Third, you are possessed with a backsliding spirit, they said to Moses, why don’t you just take us back to Egypt. They had just been brought out from under the whips of Pharaoh and within a few days they are standing there saying, we would be better off in Egypt. How quickly we as people forget, they were willing to trade their present difficulty for a permanent one. Why would we want to go back to Egypt, the world, sin, bondage, and slavery? Because, we have stopped going forward and our focus is no longer ahead, but behind. Stopping in the journey means starting to look back over your shoulder and if we stop going forward eventually we will start going backward. When the Israelites stopped moving forward they began to camp out. Some of us have been camped out in the place of hurt feelings for too long and it’s time to pull up stakes & GO FORWARD! Some have been camped out in the place of anger, depression, bitterness, laziness, indifference, comfort, complacency, self-satisfaction and it is time to pull up the stakes and GO FORWARD! Today God is ready to take you on a journey, out of that place of depression and into a place of joy, to move you from laziness and indifference to a place of service and power, from comfort and complacency to stretching you in your faith, from satisfaction with self to fill you with a hunger and thirst for Him. God didn’t bring them out to take them back, He didn’t bring them out to abandon them. God didn’t bring them out to camp there, this was not the land He had promised to them, there was so much more. Today God calls us out on a journey of Faith with Him in which we will encounter great obstacles all around us. Our tendency will be to cry and whine, to even want to go back but we must remember to move forward, there is nothing to go back to but slavery. Where are you camped out at today, is it time to stop crying and start moving forward in Faith?