How does Satan Attack our Faith?

Satan is not stupid. It is naïve for us to think that he is. Satan knows exactly what he is doing. He is sophisticated and conniving. Though he is pure evil, he has many centuries of experience in disrupting the faith of the followers of Christ. Look around you. Watch the news.

Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

- Ephesians 6:11

Satan has schemes/plans. And his plan is to bring you down.

Satan is relentless and he knows your weaknesses. Since "faith is the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1), all Satan has to do is make you uncertain or compromise your convictions. He does not have to destroy your faith to win the battle. He does not have to make you curse the Almighty to win back your soul. If Satan can convince you that something else or somebody else is more important than your relationship with the Christ, he's got you.

Have you played any sports, especially team sports? Did you ever get a scouting report on the opposing team? You needed to know the other team's weaknesses and strengths; where they had their success in winning games and how they could be defeated. This was valuable information. If their strengths were able to exploit your weaknesses, then you knew what you needed to work on in practice that week. You need a scouting report on Satan.

You need to know what his objective is and where he is vulnerable. You are in a war for your soul. His whole objective is to get you to compromise your faith. He strives to weaken you by sending faith-attacking messages through media, education, music, friends and even family. He will use any tool he can to plant seeds of doubt in your mind. He doesn't even have to get you to stop attending church. His goal is for you to have stagnant faith; no growth, no reaching out. He wins if he gets you to settle for nominal church attendance.

So let's get the scouting report on the enemy and his team. We know from scripture that Satan is in the business of providing temptation. He cannot make us sin, but he can make sure we have ample opportunity to do so. He was called "the tempter" when he tempted Jesus in Matthew 4. In this passage we have the tempter offering things to Jesus that sounded attractive but resulted in sin and disobedience to the Father. "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread" Matthew 4:3. The Devil was tempting Jesus. Jesus had been fasting for forty days. When your body has been deprived of food that long, you will do anything for just one bite.

The Tempter doesn't tempt you with things you're not interested in. He is intelligent enough to provide temptations in the areas we are weakest in. He will keep that temptation in front of you until you demonstrate that it is no longer a temptation. When you conquer and overcome a temptation in your life Satan tries something else. He is not so ignorant as to try to tempt you in something you do not have a struggle with.

If Satan knows you struggle with sexual lust, than that is the area he will target. This has been one of his favorites for years, and he has a new weapon he has added to his arsenal. It is internet pornography. It is easily accessible and nobody even knows you are doing it (or so you think). It fits perfect with Satan's scheme. The poison is administered through the eyes and into the soul. The Christian dies on the vine with few, if any external signs. Attendance, Bible study, prayer, outreach,... Everything looks good on the outside but a killer lurks on the inside and the end result is separation from God.

Internet porn works like a drug overloading your brain with the pleasure chemicals, endorphins. So the brain compensates for the additional stimulus. Eventually a tolerance is developed. Porn viewers transition from wanting porn to needing it. Porn gives viewers a skewed and negative perception of the opposite sex. The desire for "real" relationships decreases. If you are married, your interest in your spouse decreases and you are three times more likely to have an affair than those who abstain. Porn is one of Satan's tools he uses to destroy the faith of believers. It will destroy your relationship with God unless you stop it.

Satan also attacks our faith by providing hardships. We learned this strategy from the book of Job in chapter nine. If Satan believes you can be led astray through hard times that is what he will use. Picture a young committed couple who falls into financial hardship. She gets a job to help make ends meet. Maybe he gets a second job. Before long they don't have time to read the Bible or pray together like they used to. One or both of them get scheduled to work on Sundays or Wednesday nights. Before long they are not getting the spiritual nourishment they need for a healthy and vibrant walk with God and they begin to wither on the vine. Satan has once again done his job.

Or picture a couple with a young child. They love their child deeply but one day that child is taken away through a tragic accident or disease. Seeds of doubt come as a result of this hardship. "If God really loved us, why would He allow our baby to die?" They feel betrayed by God. Satan will use hardship if he thinks it will pull us away from God. Do a little introspection. Would hardship pull you away from God if you had an experience like this?

The other side of the coin is Satan can attack our faith by providing affluence. If the tempter cannot cause you to denounce your faith by taking money away, he sometimes causes people to lose sight of Christ by providing them with more money than they can handle. Your company offers you a promotion, but it means locating to a place where there is no church or where you and your family will not do well spiritually. Or through your affluence you become pridefully independent, feeling like maybe you don't need God as much since you have worldly success. Affluence can be a curse rather than a blessing. Open your eyes to the possibility that the enemy can lead you away from Jesus by providing you with financial success.

Agur the son of Jakeh had something to say about this subject.

⁸Keep deception and lies far from me,
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
⁹That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?”
Or that I not be in want and steal,
And profane the name of my God.

- Proverbs 30:8-9

When was the last time you turned down a job or a promotion because it offered too much money? Hopefully being in Christ has changed the way you think about money. It is not always a blessing. Satan can work through affluence to pull you away from God.

Sometimes Satan attacks our faith by providing destructive messages, particularly with regards to home and family. See if you recognize some of his messages. "Marriage doesn't have to last a life time. If your marriage isn't working, just get a divorce." "Sexual purity and virginity is boring. Get out and live it up." "No one needs to be the head of the household." "The Bible was great during its time, but it just doesn't apply today." These thoughts do not come from God. They are messages from Satan and he uses them to weaken our faith.

If you are a "Lord of the Rings" fan, you may remember a character named Grima Wormtongue who had lulled King Theoden into a miserable funk by whispering destructive messages into his ear. Lucifer is also quite adept at getting his disparaging missives into the hearts of those who make little to no effort to block out this world's malevolence. Don't listen to him. Hear the voice of God.

One final trick of the Devil is he sometimes leads us to believe that talk can take the place of action. We can talk all we want about being pure, but until we take action against our sin nothing changes. We can talk about evangelism and all the different ways to get it done, but until we actually do it, nobody gets saved. Talk is cheap.

¹⁵If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?

- James 2:15-16

Thank God for the book of James. This is pure spiritual common sense. What good does it do to talk about helping someone if you never actually help them? What good does it do to go to church and Bible class and talk about how to be pure and deal with our sin but then never take action? Do not be fooled. Do not live in the land of good intentions. Stop merely talking about living God's way and start doing it. Talk does not take the place of action.

We could go on. Satan has many ways to attack your faith. He can provide temptation, hardship or affluence. He can lead you astray with his destructive messages or lull you into believing that talk takes the place of action. Whichever poison he happens to be serving to you today, be wise and avoid the traps he has set.

This is spiritual warfare, and Satan is out to tear down your faith. Don't let him. If you lose your faith, you lose your most precious possession so guard it fervently. Set your jaw right now and decide Satan will not have the victory over your life. These are only a few of Satan's tactics. It is up to you to figure out how he is getting to you. If you rely on God you have nothing to fear from Satan. Keep your guard up, resisting Satan's deceptive strikes. If you do he will flee from you (James 4:7).