GTO Seeds for Growth, Volume #105
See the Enemy's Lies for What They Are
by Bette Gillogly
The fangs are FAKE!
Scripture says that our enemy, the devil, goes around like a roaring lion looking for someone…anyone…to devour (1 Peter 5:8 ). His sharp teeth look so real. But Jesus crushed the serpent's head and broke all his teeth when He died to pay the penalty for our sin and rose again in victory over sin and death! Are you grinning from ear to ear? Well, you should be because this means that the fangs that look so ferocious are actually fake. The only weapons against believers the evil one has left are lies and deceit.
How do I know? The Bible tells me so. And I can look back on my life and actually recognize times when satan tricked me into believing his fake fangs were real. And I bet you can too. (That whole `hindsight better than foresight' thing.)
Perhaps his biggest trick was the first one he played on me as a brand new Christian. I was ten years old when I asked Jesus to be my Savior. Being too big a chicken to walk down front and talk with a grown up about becoming a Christian, I waited `til I was alone in my room later that evening. Asking
Jesus to save me at such a young age was a very smart move on my part, but choosing to take such a monumental step without talking it through with an adult was really dumb. I say this because it left a tiny seed of doubt in my soul whether I had done it right…whether the transaction was indeed complete.
Of course, the devil never wastes such a juicy opportunity. And being a silly kid simply made me an easier target. Oh, how the evil one loves easy targets and always takes advantage of such!
For the next seven years, the devil deceived me again and again. "What if I didn't say the right words?" "What if I'm not really saved?" I tried to do all the right things to grow as a Christian. I read my Bible. I prayed. I went to church and youth group. But I was too embarrassed to talk with
The only weapons against believers the evil one has left are lies and deceit.
anyone about how I could have assurance of my salvation, which, in itself, was part of the whole trick because by then I had an image to uphold. Every time I heard a sermon about salvation or sat through an invitation to be saved, I could barely breathe because of the hard knot of fear somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. My uncertainty kept me in bondage to fear. You might say I was a "partially paralyzed Christian." I still sort of functioned as a Christian, but I was never truly FREE to live in the joy of being a Christian.
After high school, I even went to Bible College Appalachian Bible College in southern West Virginia. Imagine a Bible college student, and I still wasn't sure I was really a Christian! I was so tired of being afraid. And I was especially tired of feeling like a fraud. The truth is, I was NOT a fraud! But the accuser deceived me into feeling like one, and that in turn made me ineffectual and completely powerless.
I had a work-loan scholarship to ABC and was dutifully fulfilling my work-loan obligations that sunny Autumn day in 1962. (In other