The Closer we get to God, the more Satan will attack us.

The Closer we get to God, the more Satan will attack us.

You may ask, “If I am close to God how can Satan even approach me?”  Well, look at Eve!  God took a couple and created them to spend an eternity with him.  First Adam then from his flesh Eve.  Who would ever dream that both of them would remain untouchable?  Eve’s promise to obey God by staying away from the tree in the center of the garden was always on her mind.  Then, while in her premise of listening to the words God spoke to Adam and herself, who should suddenly approach her with, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”  This became a very subtle way of setting a trap for any of us by making a question appear to find the weakness in her mind and ours as well.  (Gn 3: 1).

Satan didn’t need to inject a direction within Eve’s ability to fail, he simply presented to her, as he does to all of us, the opening to our weakness that drew her to simply go after the one thing that would give her pleasure.  No one was closer to God (even though both she and her husband were the only humans) than the first human beings God created.  Yet, when we step back and view the free-will God gave us, Satan will accomplish his opportunity to open a vast array of pleasures before us and allow the very weaknesses we have to take over.

To some the weakness may be sexual in nature.  Then to many more their weakness will be a failure to avoid the desire for wealth that may affect people who cannot stay away from the attraction to luxury at any cost.  But, the weakness that is the most devastating is the failure of keeping their sense of power under control.  It is here that the human heart’s insatiable desire to rule over people’s morals to control everyone who enters their life.  

It is here, when we find God and adhere to his commands of love, that Satan will find an opening in our weakness and constantly bring events or the temptations we admire to a conclusion as we fall once, twice, or even seven times.  

As written before and using the old stand-by excuse, most people seem to commit the same series of sins over and over.  Why is this so relevant we may ask?  Because as mentioned above all of us are not susceptible to the same weakness as others, but what attracts each of us is found within our own type of being satisfied differently than someone else.  Satan knows our weaknesses and certainly uses that to tempt our ability to refrain from a moral subjection.

Think back to the Easter Exultet when we thank God for our sinfulness.  Without sin, Christ would not have come to redeem us. It is a fact that our humanity will always fail since we are a knat’s excuse for finding pleasure at any cost.  We sin, Christ suffered to pay our ransom, and we find a mercy that is beyond any comprehension the human mind can understand.  

The sense of any of this cannot be answered in a moment of fear that we’ve been taught regarding the immense forgiveness God has for the sinner.  Yet, most of the parables Jesus used to describe his Father’s love is found each time we fail and seek that premise of mercy that is always by our side.  In case you are not familiar with the poem, “The Hound of Heaven” find it and read the very description of a God who loves the sinner and will go to any length to find us.  It’s the same as the Good Shepherd who leaves the flock and searches for the one lost sheep and returns with it on his shoulders.  Or, the footprints in the sand.  “I thought you said you would always walk with me.  Yet, when I looked down there was only one set of footprints in the sand.  “My child, that was when you were not able to walk alone because of a weakness, and I picked you up and carried you.”  

Every time many of us fall from the attractions to sin, and the probability is more than we would like to admit, we must be thankful for a God who loves us and is quick to forgive rather than condemning his child whom he loves with an endless desire to have us live with him in eternity.

Ralph B. Hathaway