The Accuser

Revelations 12:10-11 “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down. I think this is great! Do you know who the accuser is? Has he visited you before? Have you ever had a voice in your head that was constantly telling you all the things you’ve done wrong in your life? You know the voice I’m talking about, the one in your head that is the first one to point out when you do something wrong. The one that says negative things and tries to make you feel bad. That is the accuser.

The verse says “they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb.” Do you know what that means? Jesus is the Lamb. This means the accuser was conquered with Jesus’ blood. When Jesus died on the cross he took our sins with him. Whatever sins this accuser is trying to convince you that you did, you don’t have to worry because Jesus already paid the price for them. He paid the ultimate price for our sins, and now all we need to do is repent and turn back to the Lord.

Repentance is something that I have talked about before and I believe will keep coming up. I think there are two main reasons why repentance keeps coming up. First is that when we sin we fracture the relationship between us and God and each time we sin we cause that fracture to get bigger and bigger. If we want to repair the damage that we have done to our relationship all we need to do is turn back to the Lord, tell Him how sorry we are, and He is waiting there with open arms to forgive us.

The second reason repentance is so important is because of this verse. It is because if we have sins that we have not repented for then the accuser is going to come and use those sins as a way to drive an even bigger wedge in between us and God. Have you ever noticed that the accuser is always making you feel bad about yourself. He is never saying things like, great job at church today! You really prayed hard. No, the accuser wants to make you feel bad about yourself. He wants you to feel that you are unworthy of God’s love. He wants you to give up on trying to be loved by God. Do you know why he does this? He does this because there is a war going on every day for your soul.

I know not everyone believes in spiritual warfare, but it is alive and well whether we believe in it or not. The enemy wants nothing more than to win your soul for himself. He wants to spend all eternity torturing you in Hell. That may seem harsh and I am sorry if this is the first you are hearing of this. I am not trying to scare you. I just want to help you to be aware because when we are aware we can make a conscious choice on the things we do. The enemy has so many sneaky tactics. He will never come right out and question the facts of God because he knows he can’t win that debate. He is much more subtle than that.

If you have never read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, I would highly suggest it. The book is a series of letters written from a senior level demon to his nephew, who is just learning how to be a demon. The nephew is writing to his uncle about the soul he is in charge of “turning to the dark side.” The uncle explains the best ways to get a soul. He explains some tactics to use and why they are good or bad. It is very eye opening and thought provoking.

I found an article that lists the tactics of the enemy from the book. I have put a link for this in the episode notes. https://mindyclemons.com/2014/03/20/screwtapes-tactics-revealed/ It is not as much an article as it is a list of all the tactics. I think the list is pretty comprehensive. There are 100 tactics on this list. I am not going to go over them all, but I do think it is important to point out a few because if we want to change something, the first step is to be aware of it.

One of the tactics of the enemy is to get you focused on the church itself, and the people in it instead of God. Have you ever been sitting in church and you look around and think about everything except Jesus? Have you gotten distracted looking at someone’s outfit, or judging someone for talking or even worse, being on their phone at mass. Or, maybe you are silently judging how the parents in the pew next to you are dealing with their children? This is the work of the enemy. If he can get you focused on unimportant things during mass/church service, then you won’t be listening to what is really important, the Word of God.

Another tactic of the enemy is to get you focused on “mutual daily annoyances of relationships.” In other words, instead of thinking and focusing on how much you love your spouse and how God brought you two together, you focus on all the annoying things that your spouse does. Instead of being loving towards your spouse you may start to feel differently. You are no longer grateful for this loving spouse, you may even start to feel resentful. These are not the feelings that God wants us to have. These are the feeling that start to harden our hearts.

A third tactic the enemy uses is to “make prayer a mood not effort of the will.” Sometime we may not pray because we are not in the mood to pray. We tell ourselves that it is ok if we don’t pray today because we just aren’t feeling it. We don’t look at prayer as a discipline that we should be doing every day whether we feel like it or not. Back in the days before Jesus, the Jews used to pray 3 times a day. It was not whenever they felt like it. Daniel prayed 3 times a day even when it was decreed a law that you may not pray to the Lord. He was thrown in the lions den because he refused to stop worshiping the Lord. I wonder if it would change our attitude toward prayer if we thought about how lucky we are that praying to our Lord is allowed in this country. Some people don’t have that right and risk their lives when they do it.

A big tactic these days by the enemy is “fear and anxiety for the future. We tend to spend a lot of time worrying about what will happen next. What if out child makes a bad decision and ruins their future? What if our husband gets in a car crash on his way home from work? What if we lose this baby that we are carrying inside of us? What if I lose my job? What if questions come up and then we focus on them and we think about them instead of relying on God and trusting His word when He says that He will take care of us and that He will use all things for our good. When we are focused on our fear and anxiety we are not focused on God.

Sometimes the enemy can even use our success as a tactic to draw us away from God. You would think that the more successful you were, the more grateful you would be to God for all He has given to you. However, the enemy gets in there and uses your success to create an unhealthy attachment to the things of this world. Suddenly your success is no longer about how blessed you are to be doing so well. Now your focus shifts to all of the stuff you are able to afford. The you start to collect more and more stuff. This can lead to focusing more and more on worldliness and less and less on our heavenly father that made the success possible.

Do you see how these tactics are not overly obvious? The enemy doesn’t come into your life, guns blazing, and try to blow up all your have. He sneaks in the back door and attacks in small ways. Ways that most of the time we don’t even notice because they are so subtle and they happen so gradually. I think reading this book was so great because it opened my eyes to so many ways that our lives and our spirituality are under attack.

The scripture verse from the beginning of this episode is good news. Revelations 12:10-11 “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”

If we focus on this scripture and we remember that God has already conquered our accuser than when he tries to pull all of these tactics on us, we can see them for what they really are. They are an attempt to pull us and our focus away from our heavenly father. Once we know this, it is much easier to resist these tactics. Take a minute and think about which tactics you have see the enemy using in your life. Are you going to let him continue to be the accuser? Are you going to let him take your focus off our one true God?

Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask you to open our eyes to any ways that the accuser is affecting our lives. Lord please shine a light on any tactics the enemy may be using to draw our focus away from you. Lord we love you and we want to focus on you and we want to live like you want us to live and we need your help Lord. We need you to show us the way. Lord give us the gift and grace of wisdom so that we can see where the enemy is at work in our life. Lord we thank you for defeating the accuser and saving us from him. You are so amazing and we're so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.