05 January 2020
Two-Minute Features | 12 January 2020

Satan Tries to Warp our Thoughts (TMF:1280)

Friday, January 10, 2020
Peace to Live By: Satan Tries to Warp our Thoughts (TMF:1280) - Daniel Litton
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       For the individual, Satan wants to warp our minds into thinking wrong thoughts, lies, so that we will not progress in our Christian growth, our character development, but instead be downtrodden and unmotivated in life. Satan wants to saturate our minds in evil. If he can mess up our minds, then our speech and actions are toast. For married couples, Satan attacks them with his evil plans hoping to tear them down and overtime eventually lead them into divorcing. He loves to destroy marriages and families. We know from Scripture that God hates divorce. And divorce will also damage the children’s lives who are involved. Divorcing can incorrectly model to the children that marriage really isn’t that important—that it’s a disposable thing. And finally, Satan wants to tear the body of Christ apart by causing division based off of different things, like people’s individual prosperity, or even cliques, political beliefs, or people’s personal educational levels. If he can divide the church, he has accomplished his evil.

Satan Has Evil Things Planned for Us (TMF:1279)

Thursday, January 09, 2020
Peace to Live By: Satan Has Evil Things Planned for Us (TMF:1279) - Daniel Litton
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       Recall what the Apostle Peter has told us, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8, 9, ESV). We should not be surprised when evil is trying to come upon us, as if something strange were happening to us, but we should realize that our other brothers and sisters in Christ experience the same kinds of attacks. Realizing this can encourage us to stand firm. Satan has evil planned for us in different areas of our lives, whether it be for us individually, or our families, or even our church collectivity. For the individual, Satan wants to warp our minds into thinking wrong thoughts, lies, so that we will not progress in our Christian growth, our character development, but instead be downtrodden and unmotivated in life. Satan wants to saturate our minds in evil.

Satan's Way is Never Better Than God's Way (TMF:1278)

Wednesday, January 08, 2020
Peace to Live By: Satan's Way is Never Better Than God's Way (TMF:1278) - Daniel Litton
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       Satan’s way of doing something is never better then God’s way of doing something. Like, for instance, Satan wants people to engage in sexual relationships outside of marriage. However, people who do that lose God’s best for them. God tells us to wait to have sex until marriage. He tells us to marry the person we love, who also knows him, and then enjoy the gift of sex that he has given to us. That’s what will give us long-lasting, true happiness. Practicing fornication will only bring us death, and lead us to wanting more. It won’t satisfy our souls. Now, let’s discuss the part where Jesus says, “but deliver us from evil.” In the most basic sense, it is true that Satan has some bad plans for us. He has some bad things he has prepared for us and he wants to accomplish his plan. God has a different plan, and Jesus is wanting us to ask God to deliver us from Satan’s plans so instead we get to experience God’s plans. Satan’s will only hurt us, it never helps us.

Temptations Try & Test Our Character (TMF:1277)

Tuesday, January 07, 2020
Peace to Live By: Temptations Try & Test Our Character (TMF:1277) - Daniel Litton
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       God led Jesus to be tempted for his own glory, his own purposes, so that he might be tempted and yet shown guiltless. For the same reason we may be undergoing a series of temptations from Satan, which try and test our character to see where we stand in our own personal growth. We do know that when we speak back God’s Word, and put our trust in God, that we can and will endure through trials and temptations and come out on the other side just fine. Thirdly, Satan and his demons can tempt us with different things even without God’s leading as I’m sure we are all familiar with and deal with on a daily basis. Satan tempts us because he wants to mess up our relationships with God, our fellowship with God, and he tempts us because he wants to mess up our lives, and cause us to lose good things, good gifts, from God, and our own personal peace. Satan’s way of doing something is never better then God’s way of doing something.

God Can Lead Us to be Tempted by Satan (TMF:1276)

Monday, January 06, 2020
Peace to Live By: God Can Lead Us to be Tempted by Satan (TMF:1276) - Daniel Litton
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       What I want us to see here is that because we have evil desires in our flesh, those desires can in fact lead us into temptation as we want what is not allowed. And if we don’t cast down the wrong desire, we end up sinning. So, God does not tempt us with things in order to see if we will sin or not. God already knows before the temptation comes what our response will be (see Matt. 26:34, 75). He can see our hearts, as he knows us. Secondly, though, God can and will at times lead us to be tempted by Satan, just as he did with the Lord Jesus Christ when the Bible tells us that the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wildnesses to be tempted by the devil. But God wasn’t the one doing the tempting, it was Satan who actually was doing it. With Jesus, it was a little bit different, because he didn’t have a sin-nature. He did have human flesh, and the weaknesses that comes with our flesh, but he didn’t have a sin-bent nature. God led Jesus to be tempted for his own glory, his own purposes, so that he might be tempted and yet shown guiltless.