Satan’s Desire

Satan’s Desire

For us as Christians, and indeed really for all of humanity; we have a vicious enemy! This enemy is cunning, deceitful, powerful, intelligent and hellbent on absolute and total victory!

I am often asked; “why does Satan hate us so much?” My honest assessment in answering this question is: “because God loves us so much!”

You see, before God ever created anything, even the angels; he planned ahead to manifest himself in bodily form into the human race in the event that mankind might fall into mortal ruin via sin. 

Satan was uniquely positioned to observe all of Gods creation, and was keen to note that “mankind alone” was created in Gods own image; and that God had programmed a means of restoration for mankind, should he exercise the freedom to rebel against his own maker.

This lofty angelic position enabled Satan to witness the praise and worship demonstrated towards God by all the host of Heaven! He became envious, prideful, and determined that he would defeat and replace God.

His very first strategy in this conspiracy against God was to recruit a vast celestial army, (1/3 of angels) and having accomplished that, he plotted to entice mankind into joining his rebellion!

With that heavenly and cosmological backdrop; we need to assess ten points of Satan’s Desire!

1-Satan desires to be like God! (Isaiah 14:14) In fact, Satan wants all the host of Heaven as well as all of mankind to usher praise and worship upon him alone. He desires the absolute total submission of all of creation for himself.

2-Secondly, Satan desires to “possess you or have you for himself.” In Luke 22:31, Jesus informed Peter that Satan desired to “have him.” In the event that Satan could “have” anybody is in essence an effort to take them away from God; either through deception or by playing on ones ignorance. 

3-Satan’s earnest desire is blind us to the truth. He doesn’t want anybody to know that God is love; in contrast to the fact that he (Satan) is evil and a liar as well as a murderer. 

4-Satan’s great desire is to “devour” us! He is a conniving destroyer of the things all that God has providentially established. Whether it be truth, love, peace, goodness, honesty, order, purity, righteousness, purpose of soul, or life itself; Satan desires to devour it! I Peter 5:8 describes Satan, our chief adversary as roaring, angry, devouring lion, and so he is!

5-Satan also desires to divide us into various kinds of warring camps, so as to conquer us through many covert means. He incites wars, controversy, chaos, envy, and troubles of many kinds. (James 4:1)

6-Satan desires to cause us all to be discouraged! Satan hates Christians who are strong in their faith, and are exquisite examples of loyal Godly servant hood.

7-Aside from Satan’s desire to discourage us, he also wants to distract us from Godly service and to become disengaged from God altogether! 

8-Satan is always scheming to cause us to become an embarrassment to God. He desires to destroy any public testimony that we might be exhibiting. Satan hates Christian who might have any “curb appeal” so to speak. 

9-Satan desires to break down any “hedges of protection” that God might have arranged for us to have as our defense against Satan! This is most uniquely demonstrated in the narrative between God and Satan concerning Job’s integrity. Satan hates the fortress that God supplies to us through prayer and his word.

10-Satan desires to “sift us like wheat.” Satan never gives up! He is relentless! He would desire nothing more than to “separate” us from God! And he will stop at nothing in his attempt to violently shake us away from God.

But, thanks be to God, “Satan’s greatest desires” will never be realized! He will never defeat God! He will never overtake Heaven! And he cannot separate me from the love of God. 

Romans 8:35-38 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Focus on Bible

author: Darrell G. Young

October 11, 2021