Uprooting Strife
17 October
Can I be transparent? Is that ok via the Internet? Well let's just say this: the past few days I've been hit with a lot of spiritual warfare that I haven't had to deal with for a long time. And through all of it I realized (with the help of the Holy Spirit) one crucial thing:
Satan is a middle school girl.
Now that's not to say middle school girls are demonic. Let me explain.
If you don't know me, I'm a middle school teacher and I LOVE it. But one of my strongest convictions deals with catty girls because I was one. So naturally in my classroom, we don't do that. But through my experience I know their number one activity is starting and spreading rumors. In fact this week I had to deal with a situation where a girl had been spreading rumors around.
Satan does the same thing because rumors are a perversion of truth and that is sin. He loves to spread rumors about you and me. So when Jesus enlightened me with the word "rumor" relating to what Satan does, I looked it up in the dictionary and the results were very interesting. The word rumor means "a story or statement in general circulation without confirmation or certainty as to facts." This is true. However the archaic definition listed really interested me: "a continuous, confused noise; clamor; din."
I thought that was an incredibly accurate way to explain how Satan tries to get to us. He is continuously spreading rumors, or continuous NOISE, about you trying to get a rise out of you.
The Bible speaks about gossip and rumors in a lot of places but one of the biggest places is in Proberbs.
“A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends.”
Proverbs 16:28 (NLT)
Did you catch the process here? Satan's rumors are first planted to cause strife and then when are watered and entertained bloom into a terrible plant of division. I've realized through my own experience that usually Satan's rumors are feeble attempts to separate me from a loving God. Satan's main goal is to try to get me to walk away from God and he attacks me because he can't attack God. But it doesn't have to go down like that. You don't have to watee those seeds and let them bloom. You can uproot that plant before it even gets a drop of water.
So what do we do when rumors are being told about us? How do we not water the seeds of strife? Rumors go away when truth is spoken. So when rumors are spoken, our job is to fire back with the truth from the Word of God. At that point the lies have no bearing and they will disappear.
Here's the take away that I want you to feel empowered by:
Don't let Satan tell rumors about you. When he starts that junk, rebuke him and allow the rumor to fall back into the pit where it belongs. Don't let the seeds of strife bloom into a place of division.
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