Seeking Someone to Devour

Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
 1 Peter 5:8

Your adversary is seeking someone to devour.  He is on the prowl.  
The devil prowled around KatieLyn* and devoured her god-given dream, and then he got Joe's dream for dessert!    

It amazes me how may people consider themselves to be Christian and yet are in denial about the reality of the devil and his methods. Many will prefer to bad-mouth God rather than admit the devil stole from them!  Somehow it becomes "easier" for them to believe that God does not want them to be blessed than it is to accept the idea that the devil got the better of them. They will make God out to be a niggardly closefisted step-father rather than call the devil a thief.  

Sometimes they will even blame themselves for the loss! Or maybe they will try to convince themselves that they didn't really want it after all. Or worse, they will fall into the deception that they are better off with out God's intended blessing—that it wasn't a blessing after all.  

But the Bible says Satan is looking for those he can destroy. One cannot destroy something that is already ruined. The devil looks for good things to destroy, like a godly marriage. This Answer to fifteen years of KatieLyn's prayers made a prime target for the devil. He lusted for its destruction and pulled out the stops to despoil it.

Those who want a soft, happy, and comfortable religion will stick their heads in the sand before they will face the truth. This is a set-up for repeating mistakes from lessons that were not learned the first time, nor the second. Christianity, lived right, requires grit.

That Satan makes destructive attacks on the godly is an ancient truth. In Job 1:7, God asks Satan what he has been up to. And:
"Satan answered the LORD, 'I have been roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.'"

Compare that with the earlier verse from 1 Peter 5:8:
"Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

It is the same.

The same Bible that warns believers of Satan's schemes also gives instructions for the proper response. "Do not give the devil a foothold," Ephesians 4:27.  The King James says, "Neither give place to the devil." Don't get angry, neither give him a place. Yet that is precisely what happened in the case of the runaway bride. Her mother provoked her to anger by intentionally picking fights and then KatieLyn gave place to the devil by putting more trust in the words that her mom was using to rile her up than she did trust the Lord's answer to her prayers.

The Lesson
Satan is not on your side. Anyone who intentionally picks fights with you is not on your side, no matter how much they claim to be doing it "for your own good."   Provoking a person to anger weakens them.  Whether she meant to or not, KatieLyn's mom weakened KatieLyn's faith.

It is plain that Gwen, mother of the runaway bride, never fully trusted her daughter; and she trusted God even less. We see this in her behavior. Gwen felt compelled to insert herself into the engagement. She could not simply state her position once and let God handle it; she had to keep coming back over and over until KatieLyn described the fighting as "constant."

Gwen was always there to give the devil a foothold. Night after night she was building a larger platform for the devil to stand on, as time after time she would gin up KatieLyn's faith-destroying anger. The devil had found someone he could devour, and because of the codependent relationship between KatieLyn and her mom, it would be a two-fer.  Not only could Satan destroy the liberating marriage that God had planned for KatieLyn, he could also drive her and her mom into an even deeper codependency.




* Pseudonyms are used throughout this blog. KatieLyn is the Runaway Bride, Joe is the Run-From Groom, and Gwen is Mother of the Runaway Bride.